Social identity is increasingly accepted as a key concept underpinning the endogeneity of economic behaviour and preferences. This feature is especially important in explaining redistribution preferences as well as attitudes towards redistribution and pro-social behaviour. This paper carries out a

-cycle incomes are the result of the interplay of age and experience, our approach offers promising new insights into the effects of these variables on redistribution preferences. We provide evidence based on the European Social Survey from 2002 to 2010. We estimate expected life-cycle incomes and their effect

How important is spatial identity in shifting preferences for redistribution? This paper takes advantage of within-country variability in the adoption of a single currency as an instrument to examine the impact of the rescaling of spatial identity in Europe. We draw upon data from the last three

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Altruism is an important omitted variable in much of the Political Economy literature. While material self-interest is the base of most approaches to redistribution (first affecting preferences and then politics and policy), there is a paucity of research on inequality aversion. I propose

Any opinions expressed here are those of the author(s) and not those of IZA. Research published in this series may include views on policy, but the institute itself takes no institutional policy positions. The Institute for the Study of Labor (IZA) in Bonn is a local and virtual international research center and a place of communication between science, politics and business. IZA is an independent nonprofit organization supported by Deutsche Post Foundation. The center is associated with the University of Bonn and offers a stimulating research environment through its international network, workshops and conferences, data service, project support, research visits and doctoral program. IZA engages in (i) original and internationally competitive research in all fields of labor economics, (ii) development of policy concepts, and (iii) dissemination of research results and concepts to the interested public. IZA Discussion Papers often represent preliminary work and are circulated to encourage discussion. Citation of such a paper should account for its provisional character. A revised version may be

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This paper discusses what determines the preferences of individuals for redistribution. We review the theoretical literature and provide a framework to incorporate various effects previously studied separately in the literature. We then examine empirical evidence for the US, using the General

This paper examines how individual preferences for redistribution depend on beliefs about what determines one’s lot in life and self-assessed prospects for climbing the social ladder in urban China. We find that both beliefs about what determines one’s lot in life and subjective perceptions

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