This paper investigates the influence of strategic choice and strategic luck on individuals’ preferences for redistribution, extending the existing literature on inequality and fairness in experimental economics. While much of the previous research has examined non‑strategic settings where individuals’ decisions are independent and luck is typically conceptualised as a lottery, this study introduces a strategic environment where incomes are shaped by both individual choices and the decisions of others. Furthermore, luck is redefined as a factor determined by others’ choices rather than a random lottery. Each participant participates in two blocks: Block 1 introduces a novel strategic environment based on a pure coordination game (PC), followed by redistribution over 30 rounds; Block 2 employs a standardised adaptation of the experiment from Cappelen et al. (2013) to measure preferences under non‑strategic choice and luck. The findings reveal that factors such as initial income distributions exert more significant effects on individuals’ preferences for redistribution compared to the impact of strategic and non‑strategic choice and strategic and non‑strategic luck.
Sheheryar Banuri, Amir Jafarzadeh, Robert Sugden
This paper investigates whether individuals’ redistribution preferences are influenced by initial inequalities resulting from inequalities of opportunity, a key concept in debates on fairness. Drawing on the distinction between procedural fairness (focused on equal access to opportunities) and ex‑post fairness (focused on the fairness of outcomes), we design a novel experiment to test whether individuals’ preferences for redistribution change when opportunities are equal or unequal. We conducted the experiment within a new game‑theoretical framework based on Sugden & Wang (2020), in which participants engage in a card game with varying opportunities and then decide how much to redistribute in a dictator game. The results show that participants’ redistribution preferences remain unchanged despite manipulation of equality of opportunity, suggesting that they prioritise outcomes over procedural fairness. This finding aligns with some research in the literature, arguing that most individuals focus more on outcomes than fairness in process. By exploring the relationship between procedural fairness and redistribution preferences, this paper contributes to the ongoing debate on the role of equality of opportunity in shaping perceptions of fairness in economic contexts.
Sheheryar Banuri, Amir Jafarzadeh, Robert Sugden
A key puzzle in coordination‑game literature is understanding how decision‑makers achieve success in pure coordination games. In standard game‑theoretical models, strategies do not have labels. Experimental research shows that in pure coordination games with labels, players coordinate significantly better than random choice. This improved performance arises because some labels are chosen more frequently than others, which is unexplained by game theory. This paper investigates what makes labels more salient. We conducted an experiment where participants played 30 rounds of pure coordination games using labels from 10 categories (e.g., Actors and Fruits). These labels were selected based on high rankings on specialised websites. Coordination success exceeded random chance. While label frequencies on websites and in Google searches showed no significant effects, label frequency in English‑language books significantly influenced success.