Selin Efsan Nas Ozen, PhD Student in Economics, University of Bologna, Bologna
Inequality, Responsibility, and Extreme Actions
Coauthors: Maria Bigoni and Stefania Bortolotti
This research aims to analyze some of the socio-economic determinants of extreme actions, that we dub indiscriminate punishment. Indiscriminate punishment includes actions that have disruptive effects on others, at a large cost for oneself, and it is characterized by three elements: (i) the willingness to self-sacrifice, (ii) to provide a future and uncertain benefit to the members of one’s own group, (iii) and to harm all members of the opponents’ group, even if they are potentially innocent. The aim is to investigate the following questions:
1. Does economic inequality trigger indiscriminate punishment?
2. Is indiscriminate punishment more common when inequality is determined endogenously, by others’ intentional behavior, rather than exogenously by Nature?
3. How does indiscriminate punishment affect income distribution in subsequent periods?
We implement a two by two between-subjects design. The first dimension we employ is the degree of inequality of the payoff distribution. The second dimension concerns the sources of inequality, in the sense of whether it is not a direct responsibility of a subject, or whether inequality is introduced as a choice. Players are randomly assigned to two groups, and inequality is generated in the first stage (inequality game). In the second phase, each subject has the chance to indiscriminately hit some of the other group’s members, at the cost of losing all his earnings and being excluded from the subsequent phases (sacrifice game). In the third and fourth phases the inequality game and sacrifice game are played again.