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Procedural fairness in lotteries assigning initial roles in a dynamic setting

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  14 March 2025

Gianluca Grimalda,
Anirban Kar and
Eugenio Proto
Gianluca Grimalda*
Affiliation:
Universitat Jaume I of Castelló, Castelló de la Plana, SpainInstitute for the World Economy, Kiel, GermanyCentre for the Study of Global Cooperation Research, University of Duisburg-Essen, Essen, Germany
Anirban Kar
Affiliation:
Delhi School of Economics, University of Delhi, New Delhi, India
Eugenio Proto*
Affiliation:
University of Warwick, Coventry, UKIZA, Bonn, GermanyCESifo, Munich, Germany
*
grimalda@uji.es
e.proto@warwick.ac.uk
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Abstract

We extend the study of procedural fairness in three new directions. Firstly, we focus on lotteries determining the initial roles in a two-person game. One of the roles carries a potential advantage over the other. All the experimental literature has thus far focused on lotteries determining the final payoffs of a game. Secondly, we modify procedural fairness in a dynamic—i.e. over several repetitions of a game—as well as in a static—i.e. within a single game-sense. Thirdly, we analyse whether assigning individuals a minimal chance of achieving an advantaged position is enough to make them willing to accept substantially more inequality. We find that procedural fairness matters under all of these accounts. Individuals clearly respond to the degree of fairness in assigning initial roles, appraise contexts that are dynamically fair more positively than contexts that are not, and are generally more willing to accept unequal outcomes when they are granted a minimal opportunity to acquire the advantaged position. Unexpectedly, granting full equality of opportunity does not lead to the highest efficiency.

Keywords

Procedural fairnessEquality of opportunityExperiments

JEL classification

D63: Equity, Justice, Inequality, and Other Normative Criteria and MeasurementC78: Bargaining Theory • Matching TheoryC92: Laboratory, Group Behavior

Information

Type
Original Paper
Information
Experimental Economics , Volume 19 , Issue 4 , December 2016, pp. 819 - 841
Copyright
Copyright © 2015 Economic Science Association

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Footnotes

Electronic supplementary material The online version of this article (doi:https://doi.org/10.1007/s10683-015-9469-5) contains supplementary material, which is available to authorized users.

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