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Field
Abstract
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Before
This project aims to conduct a theoretical and empirical investigation into the impacts of inequality on antisocial sentiments and the voluntary contributions to public goods. It posits that inequality tens to foster antisocial sentiments, which discourages the contributions to public goods from the poor. There is voluminous literature on the voluntary contributions to public goods in experimental economics and other social sciences. However, most of this literature assumes that the inputs to obtain the public good are the same as the inputs to obtain the private good, which essentially downplays the role of the poor’s in the production of the public good. Our project differs from the literature mainly in that the public good (e.g. committing crimes, fighting in the battlefield against foreign invaders) has totally different inputs from that for private good, which suggests that the poor’s actions would matter greatly to everyone’s welfare.
We will conduct a randomized experiment in a laboratory setting at a university in China. University students will be recruited and randomly assigned to different experimental groups.
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After
This project aims to conduct a theoretical and empirical investigation into the impacts of inequality on antisocial sentiments and the voluntary contributions to public goods in contest games. It posits that inequality tends to foster antisocial sentiments, which discourages the contributions to public goods from the poor. There is voluminous literature on the voluntary contributions to public goods in experimental economics and other social sciences. However, most of this literature assumes that the inputs to obtain the public good are the same as the inputs to obtain the private good, which essentially downplays the role of the poor’s in the production of the public good. Our project differs from the literature mainly in that the public good (e.g. fighting in the battlefield against foreign invaders) has totally different inputs from that for private good, which suggests that the poor’s actions would matter greatly to everyone’s welfare.
We will conduct a randomized experiment in a laboratory setting at a university in China. University students will be recruited and randomly assigned to different experimental groups.
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