Alexander W. Cappelen’s research while affiliated with NHH Norwegian School of Economics and other places

In recent decades, there has been an increase in the share of males struggling in the labor market and education. We show in a set of large-scale experimental studies involving more than 35,000 Americans that people are more accepting of males falling behind than they are of females falling behind, and less in agreement with government policies supporting males falling behind. We provide evidence of the underlying mechanism being statistical fairness discrimination: people consider males falling behind to be less deserving of support than females falling behind because they are more likely to believe that males fall behind due to lack of effort. These findings are important for understanding how society perceives and responds to the growing number of disadvantaged males.

This paper leverages nationally representative surveys across 60 countries and 64,000 respondents to present novel stylized facts about the relationship-specific nature of altruism. Across individuals, universalist preferences systematically vary with demographics such as age and religiosity and are predictive of many left-wing political views, albeit in culturally highly heterogeneous ways. Across countries, universalism is strongly linked to a broader radius of trust. Looking at origins, universalism varies with the economic, political, and religious organization of societies in ways that are consistent with the idea that the scope of altruism is partly shaped by economic incentives and democracy. (JEL D12, D64, D72, Z12, Z13)

In a novel large-scale experiment, we study how adults in two societies, Shanghai (China) and Norway, make real distributive decisions involving children. We find that acceptance of inequality between children increases with the age of the children, is affected by the source of inequality and the cost of redistribution, and is lower than acceptance of inequality between adults. We document a large cross-societal difference in inequality acceptance: adults in Shanghai implement twice as much inequality between children compared with adults in Norway. Finally, we show that the willingness to accept inequality between children is predictive of attitudes to child policies.

Consumers can sometimes be exploited because they make mistakes in their valuation of products. We present the results from a large-scale experimental study that examines whether third-party spectators from the general population in the United States cancel a voluntary deal where a buyer has made a mistake in the valuation of a product and agreed to pay more for the product than the seller knows it is worth. We find that the majority of the spectators cancel such deals, even when the seller’s involvement is limited to accepting a proposal made by the buyer. A substantial share of these spectators is also willing to fine the seller. However, a large minority of the spectators are willing to uphold the deal even when the seller has proposed the deal and obfuscated the information provided to the buyer. Our results shed new light on when people view market transactions as acceptable and their attitudes to government regulation of businesses. This paper was accepted by Axel Ockenfels, behavioral economics and decision analysis. Funding: This project was financed with support from the Norges Forskningsråd [Centres of Excellence Scheme Centre for Experimental Research on Fairness, Inequality and Rationality Project 262675 Grants 236995, 250415, 262636, and 302145]. The project also received funding from the European Research Council [the European Union’s Horizon 2020 Research and Innovation Programme Grant 788433]. Supplemental Material: The online appendix and data files are available at https://doi.org/10.1287/mnsc.2023.01050 .

To understand attitudes to inequality, we need to study people’s fairness preferences and beliefs about the sources of inequality. This article reviews the existing experimental literature on fairness, including our new study ‘Fairness Across the World’ that collected novel data on attitudes to inequality in 60 countries. We establish that people in general are more willing to accept inequalities that reflect differences in performance than inequalities that reflect differences in luck—and that people care more about fairness than efficiency. We also document that people differ in their fairness preferences both within and between countries. Richer countries are more meritocratic, and, correspondingly, richer people are more meritocratic within countries. People also differ in their beliefs about the sources of inequality both between and within countries, and the evidence is consistent with people having a self-serving bias in beliefs.