Maj-Britt Sterba
Welcome!
I am an experimental economist with a focus on inequality research. Currently, I am a postdoctoral researcher at the Cluster "The Politics of Inequality" at the University of Konstanz. I received my Ph.D at the Max Planck Institute for Research on Collective Goods in Bonn and the Friedrich-Schiller-University Jena.
I study which inequalities people perceive as fair or unfair. Some of my specific research interests include how fairness perceptions translate into policy preferences and how fairness perceptions change. In my more recent work, I study inequality perceptions of political elites, drawing on insights from the empirical fairness literature as well as on theories of political behaviour. I am also interested in new approaches to combine survey data with quantitative text analysis.
Research interests: Behavioural and Experimental Economics, Political Behaviour, Inequality and Fairness
Working Paper
Fairness and Support for Welfare Policies
(with Sören Harrs) [Paper draft]
The Fairness of Inequality due to Risk and Effort choices
[Discussion Papers of the Max Planck Institute for Research on Collective Goods, No. 2022/5 ]
Between Beveridge and Bismarck: Preferences for Redistribution through Public Pension
(with Christian Breunig, Friedrich Breyer, Mark Kapteina and Guido Schwerdt)
[Working Paper Series of the Cluster “The Politics of Inequality”: Nº 23 ]
Are Taxes or User-Fees more Popular among Politicians? The Case of Childcare
[Working Paper Series of the Cluster “The Politics of Inequality”: Nº 24]
(with Friedrich Breyer)
Perceptions of Deservingness and Power among Legislators
(with Christian Breunig) [Draft upon request]
Work in Progress
Large-scale Cooperation and the Moral Obligation to Help
(with Aya Adra, Oliver Kirchkamp and Lame Ungwang)
Fairness and Ideological Polarization in the US
(with Sören Harrs)
Meritocratic preferences among legislators
(with Christian Breunig, Troy Saghaug Broderstad, Javier Olivera, Lior Sheffer)