Equality of Opportunity and Preferences for Redistribution

Last registered on April 01, 2026
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Pre-Trial

Trial Information

General Information

Title
Equality of Opportunity and Preferences for Redistribution
RCT ID
AEARCTR-0018070
Initial registration date
March 30, 2026

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
April 01, 2026, 10:51 AM EDT

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

Locations

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Primary Investigator

Name
Juho Nuutinen
Affiliation
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Other Primary Investigator(s)

Additional Trial Information

Status
In development
Start date
2026-04-01
End date
2026-10-31
Keywords
Behavior, Finance & Microfinance, Lab
Additional Keywords
inequality, redistribution, equality of opportunity, merit, luck, fairness, social preferences, experimental economics
JEL code(s)
C91 Laboratory, Individual Behavior, D63 Equity, Justice, Inequality, and Other Normative Criteria and Measurement, D64 Altruism, Philanthropy, Intergenerational Transfers, D31 Personal Income, Wealth, and Their Distributions
Secondary IDs
Prior work
This trial does not extend or rely on any prior RCTs.
Abstract
A prominent stylized fact in contemporary inequality research is that countries with greater inequality of incomes also tend to be countries in which family background plays a stronger role in determining the adult outcomes of young people. This association is commonly referred to as The Great Gatsby Curve. In my research, I examine individuals' fairness views regarding equality of opportunity and intergenerational inequality in a controlled and incentivized experimental framework. More specifically, the empirical approach is the setting where participants act as impartial third-party spectators and make real redistribution decisions on initial allocations. Main research questions are as follows: First, do differences in parental merit justify unequal opportunities for the children? Second, assuming that equality of opportunity is causally connected to the level of cross-sectional inequality, how do individuals weigh the two potentially different fairness judgements concerning the two generations?
External Link(s)

Registration Citation

Citation
Nuutinen, Juho. 2026. "Equality of Opportunity and Preferences for Redistribution." AEA RCT Registry. April 01. https://doi.org/10.1257/rct.18070-1.0
Sponsors & Partners
Experimental Details

Interventions

Intervention(s)
Participants assigned the role of impartial third-party spectators are presented with a real redistribution decision involving workers and their adult children. Across treatment conditions, the redistribution decision concerns either parents' earnings or the children's playing field, or both (in the two so-called Gatsby treatments). Pre-redistribution inequality is varied by describing the initial allocations as resulting from luck (lottery) or merit (productivity in the assignment).
Intervention Start Date
2026-04-01
Intervention End Date
2026-04-02

Primary Outcomes

Primary Outcomes (end points)
Primary Outcome 1: Implemented post-redistribution inequality in earnings between Worker A and Worker B.

Primary Outcome 2: Implemented post-redistribution inequality in the multipliers (i.e. piece rates) between Child A and Child B.
Primary Outcomes (explanation)
Primary Outcome 1: This outcome is defined as the absolute difference in incomes between Worker A and Worker B, normalized by total income. Because a small share of participants may allocate more than half of the total resources to the initially worse-off worker I will also report the relative share of total income allocated to the initially disadvantaged worker, which preserves directional information about redistribution. The main treatment contrast compares this outcome when pre-decision inequality is attributed to luck versus merit.

Primary Outcome 2: This outcome is defined as the absolute difference in multipliers between Child A and Child B, normalized by total sum of the multipliers. Because a small share of participants may allocate more than half of the total resources to the initially worse-off child I will also report the relative share of multipliers allocated to the initially disadvantaged child, which preserves directional information about redistribution. The main treatment contrast compares this outcome when pre-decision inequality is attributed to parental luck versus parental merit.

Secondary Outcomes

Secondary Outcomes (end points)
Secondary Outcome 1: Relative share of total income allocated to the worker with zero initially.

Secondary Outcome 2: Relative share of total sum of the multipliers allocated to the child with zero initially.
Secondary Outcomes (explanation)

Experimental Design

Experimental Design
This is an online, individual-level randomized experiment conducted on Prolific. Participants are randomly assigned to one of six treatment conditions in a between-subjects design. After consent and instructions, participants complete the allocation task and will be asked post-experiment questions, including a few demographic questions. The target sample is 2400 participants, with approximately 400 in each treatment condition.

The parents and their adult children who solely have the role of incentivizing the spectators' redistribution decisions are the workers in the experiment. The worker-part of the experiment is also conducted online. The target is 168 parents and their 168 adult children via The Helsinki Laboratory for Behavioral and Experimental Studies (Helsinki LABBET). This would mean that each spectator decision is implemented with a probability of approximately 1/19.
Experimental Design Details
Not available
Randomization Method
Participants are randomly assigned by computer in oTree to treatment conditions using balanced randomization, with treatment cell sizes constrained to be as equal as possible.

Worker participant parents are randomly assigned to payment condition (luck vs. merit) by computer upon entering the experiment. They are also randomly matched into pairs by computer. For payment implementation, worker pairs (parent-child pairs) are randomly matched to randomly selected spectator decisions.
Randomization Unit
Individual participant (spectator). Treatment assignment is at the individual level.
Was the treatment clustered?
No

Experiment Characteristics

Sample size: planned number of clusters
2400 individual spectators
Sample size: planned number of observations
2400 individual spectator decisions
Sample size (or number of clusters) by treatment arms
Approximately 400 individual spectators in each of 6 treatment arms
Minimum detectable effect size for main outcomes (accounting for sample design and clustering)
The study is powered to detect an interaction effect size of 0.10 with approximately 80% power at a two-sided significance level of 0.05/3, assuming a standard deviation of 0.30 and equal treatment cell sizes. Under the same assumptions, the implied power for a simple treatment-mean comparison is substantially higher (approximately 99%).
Supporting Documents and Materials

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IRB

Institutional Review Boards (IRBs)

IRB Name
Hanken's Research Ethics Committee
IRB Approval Date
2026-01-23
IRB Approval Number
N/A
Analysis Plan

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