Please use this identifier to cite or link to this item: https://hdl.handle.net/10419/272305 
Year of Publication: 
2023
Series/Report no.: 
ifo Working Paper No. 398
Publisher: 
ifo Institute - Leibniz Institute for Economic Research at the University of Munich, Munich
Abstract: 
Technological change has fundamentally transformed the US labour market in recent decades, with high-earning jobs becoming increasingly focused on nonroutine, complex tasks. We provide a first experimental test of whether fairness perceptions and preferences for redistribution differ when top earners gain their incomes through luck, routine work, or complex work. We find that the desired tax rate on top earners is up to 5.3 percentage points lower for the complex work treatment compared to the routine work treatment. Interestingly, performance on complex tasks is also more likely to be seen as the result of inherited intelligence.
Subjects: 
Top income tax
technological change
redistribution
distributive preferences
fairness
JEL: 
D31
D63
D91
H24
Document Type: 
Working Paper

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