Please use this identifier to cite or link to this item: https://hdl.handle.net/10419/180314 
Year of Publication: 
2018
Series/Report no.: 
CESifo Working Paper No. 7052
Publisher: 
Center for Economic Studies and ifo Institute (CESifo), Munich
Abstract: 
A large-scale economic experiment, conducted on a representative sample of the US popula- tion, shows that cooperation creates special moral obligations. Participants in the experiment, acting as impartial spectators, transferred significantly more money to an unlucky worker when two individuals had cooperated than when they had worked independently. We further show that the effect of cooperation is strongly associated with political affiliation, with Democrats attaching significantly more importance to cooperation as a source of moral obligation than Republicans. Our findings shed light on the foundations of redistributive preferences and may contribute to explain the often observed asymmetry in moral concern for different groups of individuals, both nationally and internationally.
Subjects: 
cooperation
distributive justice
redistribution
Document Type: 
Working Paper
Appears in Collections:

Files in This Item:
File
Size





Items in EconStor are protected by copyright, with all rights reserved, unless otherwise indicated.