We survey the literature devoted to the study of the problem of allocating an infinitely divisible commodity among agents whose preferences are single-peaked. We formulate a number of normative and strategic requirements on rules, and study their implications when imposed in various combinations. A unique rule emerges as being the best-behaved from a variety of viewpoints: the uniform rule. Key...

In decision-making involving multiple criteria or attributes, the attributes are often divided into core and non-core attributes. A dominance principle is formulated in terms of core attributes, and this principle is applied whenever it is applicable. If, however, the dominance principle defined in terms of core attributes is not applicable, then non-core attributes are consulted in comparing o...

Differences in individual wealth holdings are widely viewed as a driving force of economic inequality. However, as this finding relies on crosssection data, we may confuse older with wealthier. We propose a new method to adjust for age effects in cross-sections, which eliminates transitory wealth inequality due to age, yet preserves inequality arising from other factors. This new method is supe...

This study extends a bilateral gift exchange experiment by Clark et al. (2010) who investigate how feedback of information about wages paid in the market affects both employers’ wage setting and workers’ performance. We provide either quantitative or qualitative information on the average wage paid in all worker-employer-relationships, and we also study repeated relationships (fixedmatching). W...

Most legal academics and policymakers believe that weight should be accorded to conceptions of fairness in evaluating legal policies. We explain, however, that adherence to any notion of fairness will sometimes lead to a conflict with the Pareto principle. That is, to endorse a notion of fairness is to endorse the view that it can be desirable to adopt a legal rule that will reduce the well-bei...

We study the problem of allocating a divisible good among a group of people. Each person’s preferences are single-peaked. We consider situations in which there might be more of the resource to be assigned than was planned, or there might be less of the resource. Two robustness properties are formulated, which we call one-sided composition up and one-sided composition down. We show that only one...

We study if and how social preferences extend to risky environments. We provide experimental evidence from different versions of dictator games with risky outcomes, and establish that preferences that are exclusively based on ex post or on ex ante comparisons cannot generate the observed behavioral patterns. The more money decision-makers transfer in the standard dictator game, the more likely ...

We analyze a general model of rationing in which agents have baselines, in addition to claims against the (insufficient) endowment of the good to be allocated. Many reallife problems fit this general model (e.g., bankruptcy with prioritized claims, resource allocation in the public health care sector, water distribution in drought periods). We introduce (and characterize) a natural class of all...

We compare the determinants of individual giving between two countries, Spain and the US, which differ in their redistribution policies and their beliefs over the causes of poverty. By varying the information about the determinants of income, we find that, although overall giving is similar in both countries when subjects know the actual role of luck and effort, Spanish subjects give more when ...

This paper reports the results of experiments designed to examine whether a taste for fairness affects people’s preferred tax structure. Building on the Fehr and Schmidt (1999) model, we devise a simple test for the presence of social preferences in voting for alternative tax structures. The experimental results show that individuals demonstrate concern for their own payoff and inequality avers...