Politicians’ Moral Views on Inequality: An Experiment with 1,500 Incumbents

• In Event: New Perspectives on Inequality, Redistribution, and Voting

Abstract

A commonly repeated explanation for the inequality gap between the United States and Scandinavian countries is that Americans and Scandinavians have different moral tolerance towards inequality, especially when it is seen as based on luck rather than merit. Evidence on such differences has been found among American and Norwegian citizens, but it remains unclear whether politicians in these countries hold similarly divergent views. This question has become more pressing in light of recent evidence that the economic preferences of politicians around the world are systematically skewed towards those of more conservative constituents, casting doubt on whether the different redistributive preferences between these two countries exist among those who are directly responsible for realizing them. Addressing this gap, we report results from a pre-registered experiment fielded to over 1,500 sitting politicians in Norway and the United States that assesses to what extent their willingness to redistribute in face of income inequality varies when it is the result of luck or merit, and when redistribution is costly. We find that American and Norwegian politicians differ significantly from each other in how they respond to different sources of inequity, with American politicians showing much greater tolerance to merit-based inequality, but also higher tolerance to luck-based inequality compared to Norwegian politicians. Importantly, these findings are strikingly similar to the preferences of American and Norwegian citizens, highlighting an economic policy domain in which politicians appear to closely mirror overall public preferences, and calling for future research on the sources of this congruence.

Authors

• Troy Saghaug Broderstad

• Nina Serdarevic, Department of Economics

• Lior Sheffer, Tel Aviv University