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Field
Experimental Design (Public)
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Before
The experiment has four parts. First, workers earn money in a real-effort task. Second, spectators decide how to redistribute earnings within a randomly drawn worker pair. Third, reviewers observe a spectator’s decision and decide whether to intervene and modify the allocation. Fourth, workers are paid based on the final redistribution. The study focuses on reviewers’ decisions; workers and spectators create a consequential economic environment.
Workers
Workers are recruited on Prolific. After the task, they are randomly paired; in each pair, one worker receives an additional reward determined either by Merit (higher performance) or by Luck (random draw), with equal probability across pairs. They are informed that a third party (the spectator) will see the initial earnings and the criterion and may redistribute earnings within the pair.
Spectators
There are two spectator types: human (participants recruited on Prolific) and AI (ChatGPT-5). Both receive identical instructions and information. Each worker pair is evaluated by both spectator types. Spectators choose whether and how to redistribute the initial earnings. They make the decision for a pair in the Merit condition, and for a pair in the Luck condition.
Reviewers
The same human participants return one week later as reviewers. They evaluate a spectator’s redistribution under incomplete information: they see only the final allocation and whether it was made by a human or an AI spectator (not whether initial earnings came from Merit or Luck). Reviewers can either accept the allocation or intervene by paying a small fee to reveal the criterion and then revise the allocation. Choices are elicited for a fixed set of canonical allocations in both spectator types, with randomized order. One decision is randomly selected for payment; participants remain anonymous and are never matched to their own earlier spectator decisions.
Belief Elicitation
Beliefs about the source of inequality (Merit vs Luck), conditional on the observed allocation and spectator type, are elicited with an incentivized measure.
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After
The experiment has four parts. First, workers earn money in a real-effort task. Second, spectators decide how to redistribute earnings within a randomly drawn worker pair. Third, reviewers observe a spectator’s decision and decide whether to intervene and modify the allocation. Fourth, workers are paid based on the final redistribution. The study focuses on reviewers’ decisions; workers and spectators create a consequential economic environment.
Workers
Workers are recruited on Prolific. After the task, they are randomly paired; in each pair, one worker receives an additional reward determined either by Merit (higher performance) or by Luck (random draw), with equal probability across pairs. They are informed that a third party (the spectator) will see the initial earnings and the criterion and may redistribute earnings within the pair.
Spectators
There are two spectator types: human (participants recruited on Prolific) and AI (ChatGPT-4.1). Both receive identical instructions and information. Each worker pair is evaluated by both spectator types. Spectators choose whether and how to redistribute the initial earnings. They make the decision for a pair in the Merit condition, and for a pair in the Luck condition.
Reviewers
The same human participants return one week later as reviewers. They evaluate a spectator’s redistribution under incomplete information: they see only the final allocation and whether it was made by a human or an AI spectator (not whether initial earnings came from Merit or Luck). Reviewers can either accept the allocation or intervene by paying a small fee to reveal the criterion and then revise the allocation. Choices are elicited for a fixed set of canonical allocations in both spectator types, with randomized order. One decision is randomly selected for payment; participants remain anonymous and are never matched to their own earlier spectator decisions.
Belief Elicitation
Beliefs about the source of inequality (Merit vs Luck), conditional on the observed allocation and spectator type, are elicited with an incentivized measure.
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