Abstract
Many distributional conflicts are characterized by the presence of acquired rights. The basic structure of these conflicts is that of the so-called claims problem, in which an amount of money has to be divided among individuals with differing claims and the total amount available falls short of the sum of the claims. We describe the results of a questionnaire in which Belgian and German students were confronted with nine claims problems. In the “Firm” version, respondents had to divide revenue among the owners of a firm who contribute to the activities of the firm in different degrees. In the “Pensions” version, they had to divide tax money among pensioners who have paid different contributions during their active career. Responses in the Pensions version are more egalitarian than in the Firm version. For both versions, the proportional rule performs very well in describing the choices of the respondents. Other prominent rules—in particular the constrained equal awards and constrained equal losses rules—fail to capture some basic intuitions. A substantial part of the respondents tend to become more progressive as the amount to be distributed decreases other things equal, and tend to become more progressive as the inequality in the distribution of claims becomes more unequal other things equal. All of these conclusions are robust with respect to the difference in home-country of the respondents.
Article PDF
Similar content being viewed by others
References
Alcalde J, Marco MC, Silva JA (2008) The minimal overlap rule revisited. Soc Choice Welf 31: 109–128
Aumann RJ, Maschler M (1985) Game theoretic analysis of a bankruptcy problem from the Talmud. J Econ Theory 36: 195–213
Béhue V (2003) Opinions éthiques sur les règles de division concernant les problèmes de banqueroute et de taxation. Mimeo, Université de Caen
Boeri T, Börsch-Supan A, Tabellini G (2001) Would you like to shrink the welfare state? A survey of European citizens. Econ Policy 32: 9–50
Boeri T, Börsch-Supan A, Tabellini G (2002) Pension reforms and the opinions of European citizens. Am Econ Rev (Papers and Proceedings) 92: 396–401
Bosmans K, Lauwers L (2007) Lorenz comparisons of nine rules for the adjudication of conflicting claims. CES Discussion Paper 07.05, Katholieke Universiteit Leuven
Chun Y, Thomson W (2005) Convergence under replication of rules to adjudicate conflicting claims. Games Econ Behav 50: 129–142
Chun Y, Schummer J, Thomson W (2001) Constrained egalitarianism: a new solution for claims problems. Seoul J Econ 14: 269–297
Dominguez D, Thomson W (2006) A new solution to the problem of adjudicating conflicting claims. Econ Theory 28: 283–307
Elster J (1992) Local justice. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge
Frohlich N, Oppenheimer J (1992) Choosing justice. University of California Press, Berkeley
Gächter S, Riedl A (2006) Dividing justly in bargaining problems with claims: normative judgments and actual negotiations. Soc Choice Welf 27: 571–594
Herrero C, Moreno-Ternero JD, Ponti G (2006) On the adjudication of conflicting claims: an experimental study. CORE Discussion Paper 2006/62, Université catholique de Louvain
Hougaard JL, Østerdal LP (2005) Inequality preserving rationing. Econ Lett 87: 355–360
Hougaard JL, Thorlund-Petersen L (2001) Bankruptcy rules, inequality, and uncertainty. Working Paper 4/01, Department of Operations Management, Copenhagen Business School
Ju B-G, Moreno-Ternero JD (2008) On the equivalence between progressive taxation and inequality reduction. Soc Choice Welf 30: 561–569
Konow J (2003) Which is the fairest one of all? A positive analysis of justice theories. J Econ Lit 41: 1188–1239
Moreno-Ternero JD, Villar A (2004) The Talmud rule and the securement of agents’ awards. Math Soc Sci 47: 245–257
Moreno-Ternero JD, Villar A (2006) On the relative equitability of a family of taxation rules. J Public Econ Theory 8: 283–291
Moulin H (2002) Axiomatic cost and surplus sharing. In: Arrow KJ, Sen AK, Suzumura K (eds) Handbook of social choice and welfare, vol 1. Elsevier, Amsterdam, pp 289–357
O’Neill B (1982) A problem of rights arbitration from the Talmud. Math Soc Sci 2: 345–371
Piniles HM (1861) Darkah shel Torah. Forester, Vienna
Schokkaert E (1999) M. Tout-le-monde est “post-welfariste:” opinions sur la justice redistributive. Rev Econ 50: 811–831
Schokkaert E, Overlaet B (1989) Moral intuitions and economic models of distributive justice. Soc Choice Welf 6: 19–31
Sen AK, Foster JE (1997) On economic inequality, expanded edition. Clarendon Press, Oxford
Sprumont Y (1991) The division problem with single-peaked preferences: a characterization of the uniform allocation rule. Econometrica 49: 509–519
Thomson W (2003) Axiomatic and game-theoretic analysis of bankruptcy and taxation problems: a survey. Math Soc Sci 45: 249–297
Thomson W (2008) Lorenz rankings of rules for the adjudication of conflicting claims. Mimeo
Young HP (1988) Distributive justice in taxation. J Econ Theory 44: 321–335
Young HP (1994) Equity: in theory and practice. Princeton University Press, Princeton
Open Access
This article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution Noncommercial License which permits any noncommercial use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author(s) and source are credited.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Additional information
We thank Bart Capéau, Frank Cowell, Luc Lauwers, Juan Moreno-Ternero, Frans Spinnewyn, Bertil Tungodden, and two anonymous referees for their valuable comments and suggestions. Any remaining shortcomings are ours. We thank Kurt De Cock, Tina Lievens, and Lars Schwettmann for practical assistance in running the questionnaire. Financial support from the Fund for Scientific Research—Flanders (grant G.0005.04) and the Interuniversity Attraction Poles network funded by the Federal Public Planning Service, Belgian Science Policy (grant P5/21-A) is gratefully acknowledged.
Rights and permissions
Open Access This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution Noncommercial License (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/2.0), which permits any noncommercial use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author(s) and source are credited.
About this article
Cite this article
Bosmans, K., Schokkaert, E. Equality preference in the claims problem: a questionnaire study of cuts in earnings and pensions. Soc Choice Welf 33, 533–557 (2009). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00355-009-0378-4
Received:
Accepted:
Published:
Issue Date:
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s00355-009-0378-4