Do Economists Experience the Sense of Justice?

• In Event: 2360 - Group Processes

Abstract

As understanding increases about inequality dynamics, justice dynamics, and their link, it becomes clear that a central question pertains to the proportions of individuals who do not experience the sense of justice and whether this justice-obliviousness is related to other individual characteristics. One key set consists of economists, who at least since Hayek (1976:70) have argued that “differences in rewards simply cannot meaningfully be described as just or unjust" and for whom the Ideal Economist is justice-oblivious. But are economists really bereft of the sense of justice? This paper uses state-of-the-art models and methods from the study of distributive justice to undertake a close examination of economists’ justice life. Moreover, because the view that justice has no place in assessing income distributions may have attenuated since 1976, we, fortuitously, analyze factorial survey data collected from a sample of 43 economists almost thirty years ago, in 1991. The results are unambiguous: First, all but one of the respondents provided justice evaluations about the fairness or unfairness of the hypothetical earnings of fictitious workers. Second, the respondent-specific just reward functions indicate that respondents disagree with each other on the principles of microjustice. Third, the respondent-specific just reward distributions indicate that respondents disagree with each other on the principles of macrojustice. The variety of algebraic and statistical tests we conducted on both the just reward functions and the just reward distributions suggest that at least this sample of economists possess and exercise the fairness faculties. Far from being justice-oblivious, they seem no different from everyone else routinely studied in justice research.

Author

• Guillermina Jasso, New York University