Beliefs in Merit, Trickle-Down Economics, and Preferences for Redistribution: An Experiment with the Top and Bottom 20% of the US Income Distribution

Last registered on August 09, 2023

Pre-Trial

General Information

Title

RCT ID

AEARCTR-0010535

Initial registration date

November 29, 2022

Initial registration date is when the trial was registered.

It corresponds to when the registration was submitted to the Registry to be reviewed for publication.

First published

November 30, 2022, 5:01 PM EST

First published corresponds to when the trial was first made public on the Registry after being reviewed.

Last updated

August 09, 2023, 7:21 AM EDT

Last updated is the most recent time when changes to the trial's registration were published.

Locations

Country

United States of America

Region

Primary Investigator

Name

Gianluca Grimalda

Affiliation

Kiel Institute for the World Economy

Contact Primary Investigator

Other Primary Investigator(s)

PI Name

Roberto Brunetti

PI Affiliation

Université de Rennes 1

Contact Investigator

PI Name

Maria Marino

PI Affiliation

Universitat de Barcelona

Contact Investigator

Additional Trial Information

Status

Completed

Start date

2022-07-08

End date

2022-12-31

Keywords

Behavior, Governance, Welfare

Additional Keywords

Redistribution; Income Inequality; Merit; Trickle-Down

JEL code(s)

D63, H23, C93

Secondary IDs

Prior work

This trial does not extend or rely on any prior RCTs.

Abstract

We estimate demand for redistribution by a stratified sample of US citizens selected from the bottom and top 20% of the US income distribution. Participants decide how much money to redistribute from an entrepreneur earning more than $100,000 in real life (labelled Person 1), to an individual earning less than $10,000 in real life (labelled Person 2). Person 1 is initially assigned $50 in this interaction upon completion of a task, while Person 2 is assigned $1. Using conjoint analysis, the real-life characteristics of sixteen Person 1s and four Person 2s are used to investigate the relevance of both the willingness to reward individual merit and the beliefs in trickle-down economics in accounting for participants’ preferences for redistribution. Participants are administered 16 different redistributive choices matching eight different profiles for Person 1 and two different profiles for Person 2. We manipulate (a) the number of hours worked (a measure of merit for both Person 1 and 2); (b) Whether Person 1 founded or inherited their firm (a measure of merit for the entrepreneur); (c) The number of employees in Person 1’s firm; and (d) The amount donated by Person 1 within a year (c and d being measures of the trickle-down potential of the rich choices). In a follow-up wave, we also manipulate (e) The amount of patents obtained by Person 1’s firm in the last year. One randomly selected decision is actually implemented. To check for external validity, in the second wawe of the study we add a choice on how much money to donate to a charity supporting poor people in the US.

External Link(s)

Registration Citation

Citation

Brunetti, Roberto, Gianluca Grimalda and Maria Marino. 2023. "Beliefs in Merit, Trickle-Down Economics, and Preferences for Redistribution: An Experiment with the Top and Bottom 20% of the US Income Distribution." AEA RCT Registry. August 09. https://doi.org/10.1257/rct.10535-2.0

Sponsors & Partners

Interventions

Intervention(s)

See pre-analisis plan

Intervention (Hidden)

Intervention Start Date

2022-07-08

Intervention End Date

2022-12-31

Primary Outcomes

Primary Outcomes (end points)

Amount transferred in the redistribution situation administered to participants (see pre-analisis plan)

Primary Outcomes (explanation)

Secondary Outcomes

Secondary Outcomes (end points)

Secondary Outcomes (explanation)

Experimental Design

See pre-analisis plan

Experimental Design Details

Randomization Method

Three out of the four of the treatments are applied within subjects, thus there is no need of randomization. Participants are administered 16 experimental decisions, whose order is randomly determined by the survey platform program Limesurvey. The remaining treatment is administered between subjects. The assignment to one or the other treatment is done by Limesurvey. Since we apply conjoint analysis, we do not have a control group as such.

Randomization Unit

Individual

Was the treatment clustered?

Experiment Characteristics

Sample size: planned number of clusters

No clustering is planned

Sample size: planned number of observations

900 participants recruited from an online panel.

Sample size (or number of clusters) by treatment arms

We plan conjoint analysis in which 5 attributes have been manipulated: (a) the number of hours worked by the rich stakeholder (Person 1); (b) the number of hours worked by the poor stakeholder (Person 2); (c) Whether Person 1 founded or inherited their firm; (d) The number of employees in Person 1’s firm; (e) The amount donated to charity by Person 1 within a year; (f) The amount of patents obtained by Person 1’s firm in the last year

Minimum detectable effect size for main outcomes (accounting for sample design and clustering)

See power analysis in the pre-analysis plan.

Supporting Documents and Materials

IRB