Alexander W Cappelen
Biographic Data
| ID | 1060976 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Alexander W Cappelen |
| GIVEN NAMES | Alexander W |
| FAMILY NAME | Cappelen |
| SIGNATURE | CAPPELEN A W |
| AFFILIATIONS | Norwegian School of Economics |
| ORCID | 0000-0002-3489-7085 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 28 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 93 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 28 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2001 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2026 |
| H-INDEX | 5 |
Fairness in Winner-Take-All Competitions
This paper investigates fairness perceptions of extreme income inequality generated in winner-take-all competitions. Two large-scale experiments with more than 7,000 participants from the general population of the U.S. show that extreme earnings inequality is widely accepted, even when the winner only slightly outperforms the runner-up. The effect of the winning margin on inequality acceptance is modest compared to the effect of shifting the sour…
Linking Social and Personal Preferences
Exercise Improves Academic Performance
We report the results of a randomized controlled trial testing whether incentivizing physical exercise improves the academic performance of college students. As expected, the intervention increases physical activity. The main result is that it generates a strong and significant improvement in academic performance, particularly for students who struggled at the baseline in terms of lifestyle habits. We also provide evidence on the underlying mecha…
Cooperation creates moral obligations
Inequality acceptance in China
Growing inequality poses a fundamental challenge to China’s socialist market economy. In a large-scale comparative study, we examine fairness views and beliefs about the source of inequality in China and compare them with those in two other major economies: the United States and Germany. We find that people in China consider hard work and talent much fairer sources of inequality than luck, and tend to believe that hard work and talent are much mo…
Acceptance of Inequality Between Children
In a novel large-scale experiment, we study how adults in two societies, Shanghai (China) and Norway, make real distributive decisions involving children. We find that acceptance of inequality between children increases with the ages of the children, is affected by the source of inequality and the cost of redistribution, and is lower than acceptance of inequality between adults. We document a large cross-societal difference in inequality acceptan…
Choice and Personal Responsibility
The principle that people should be held personally responsible for the consequences of their choices is a fundamental moral ideal in Western societies. We report from a large-scale experimental study of how far-reaching this principle is for inequality acceptance. We show that third-party spectators violate minimal conditions for a morally relevant choice when making redistributive decisions for two workers. They accept more inequality when the …
A Meritocratic Origin of Egalitarian Behaviour
We report from a study of how uncertainty about whether a given inequality reflects performance or luck shapes distributive behaviour. We show theoretically that the reaction to uncertainty depends on how people trade-off the probability of making a mistake when redistributing, and the size of this mistake. We show experimentally that uncertainty causes a strong egalitarian pull among a majority of meritocratic individuals. The theoretical framew…
The Merit Primacy Effect
A long history in economics going back to Adam Smith has argued that people give primacy to merit—rather than luck—in distributive choices. We provide a theoretical framework formalising the merit primacy effect, and study it in a novel experiment where third-party spectators redistribute from high earners to low earners in situations where both merit and luck determine earnings. We identify a strong and consistent merit primacy effect in the spe…
Competitiveness, gender and handedness
We conduct an intercultural experiment in three locations on three different continents to elicit competitiveness and study whether individual differences in competitiveness are related to handedness. Being a "lefty" (i.e., having either a dominant left hand or a dominant left foot) is associated with neurological differences which are determined prenatally, and can therefore be seen as a proxy for innate differences. In large-scale data with inc…
Cutthroat Capitalism versus Cuddly Socialism
There are striking differences in inequality and redistribution between the United States and Scandinavia. To study whether there are corresponding differences in social preferences, we conducted a large-scale international social preference experiment where Americans and Norwegians make distributive choices in identical environments. Combining the infrastructure of an international online labor market and that of a leading international data col…
The Effect of Early-Childhood Education on Social Preferences
We present results from the first study to examine the causal impact of early childhood education on the social preferences of children. We compare children who, at 3-4 years old, were randomized into either a full-time preschool, a parenting program, or a control group. We returned to the children when they reached 6-8 years of age and conducted a series of incentivized experiments to elicit their social preferences. We find that early childhood…
How to retrench the welfare state
In recent years, many countries have faced pressure to cut the costs of the welfare state, and different strategies have been utilized to achieve this, including stricter eligibility requirements, reduced level of benefits, and reduced maximum duration of benefits. This contribution reports the results from a Norwegian survey designed to measure which of these strategies the general population would prefer in a situation where the government has …
Fairness and the proportionality principle
Fairness and family background
Fairness preferences fundamentally affect individual behavior and play an important role in shaping social and political institutions. However, people differ both with respect to what they view as fair and with respect to how much weight they attach to fairness considerations. In this article, we study the role of family background in explaining these heterogeneities in fairness preferences. In particular, we examine how socioeconomic background …
Just Luck
Choices involving risk significantly affect the distribution of income and wealth in society. This paper reports the results of the first experiment, to our knowledge, to study fairness views about risk-taking, specifically whether such views are based chiefly on ex ante opportunities or on ex post outcomes. We find that, even though many participants focus exclusively on ex ante opportunities, most favor some redistribution ex post. Many partici…
Fairness and the Development of Inequality Acceptance
Fairness or Equality? Inequality in payments may be seen as inherently unfair, or as appropriate when it reflects differential achievement. Using an economic exchange game, Almås et al. (p. 1176 ) mapped how judgments changed from 5th-grade students to 13th graders: Fifth graders expressed a preference for equal division of rewards, whereas the 13th graders tolerated unequal outcomes, as long as they had been provided with evidence of unequal inp…
Demand for Childhood Vaccination – Insights from Behavioral Economics
Childhood vaccination is a powerful tool for reducing morbidity and premature deaths, and vaccines are usually provided for free. Despite this, several low‐ and middle‐income countries are lagging far behind in terms of their vaccination coverage. This article uses insights from behavioural economics to shed light on the mechanisms at work when people make decisions about childhood vaccination, thus explaining why demand for vaccination may be lo…
Disability compensation and responsibility
It is a central political goal to secure disabled individuals the same opportunities as others to pursue their conception of a good life. This goal reflects an ambition to combine an egalitarian and a liberal moral intuition. In this article, we analyse how disabled individuals who take part in economic activity should be compensated in order to respect these two intuitions. The article asks how a system of disability compensation should be struc…
Rewarding effort
The Pluralism of Fairness Ideals
A core question in the contemporary debate on distributive justice is how to understand fairness in situations involving production. Important theories of distributive justice, such as strict egalitarianism, liberal egalitarianism, and libertarianism, provide different answers to this question. This paper presents the results from a dictator game where the distribution phase is preceded by a production phase. Each player's contribution is a resul…
Local autonomy and interregional equality
National Responsibility and the Just Distribution of Debt Relief
The Highly Indebted Poor Countries (HIPC) initiative is the largest multilateral effort aimed at providing debt relief. In this essay, we address the question of whether this program is consistent with a view of justice commonly known as liberal egalitarianism. We argue that the HIPC initiative violates two basic liberal egalitarian principles. More generally, we show why the debate on debt relief must move beyond a discussion of whether or not c…
National Responsibility and the Just Distribution of Debt Relief
An abstract is not available for this content so a preview has been provided. Please use the Get access link above for information on how to access this content
Relocating the responsibility cut
Liberal egalitarian theories of justice argue that inequalities arising from non-responsibility factors should be eliminated, but that inequalities arising from responsibility factors should be accepted. This article discusses how the fairness argument for redistribution within a liberal egalitarian framework is affected by a relocation of the cut between responsibility and non-responsibility factors. The article also discusses the claim that equ…
Cutthroat Capitalism versus Cuddly Socialism
There are striking differences in inequality and redistribution between the United States and Scandinavia. To study whether there are corresponding differences in social preferences, we conducted a large-scale international social preference experiment where Americans and Norwegians make distributive choices in identical environments. Combining the infrastructure of an international online labor market and that of a leading international data col…
The Effect of Early-Childhood Education on Social Preferences
We present results from the first study to examine the causal impact of early childhood education on the social preferences of children. We compare children who, at 3-4 years old, were randomized into either a full-time preschool, a parenting program, or a control group. We returned to the children when they reached 6-8 years of age and conducted a series of incentivized experiments to elicit their social preferences. We find that early childhood…
A Meritocratic Origin of Egalitarian Behaviour
We report from a study of how uncertainty about whether a given inequality reflects performance or luck shapes distributive behaviour. We show theoretically that the reaction to uncertainty depends on how people trade-off the probability of making a mistake when redistributing, and the size of this mistake. We show experimentally that uncertainty causes a strong egalitarian pull among a majority of meritocratic individuals. The theoretical framew…
How to retrench the welfare state
In recent years, many countries have faced pressure to cut the costs of the welfare state, and different strategies have been utilized to achieve this, including stricter eligibility requirements, reduced level of benefits, and reduced maximum duration of benefits. This contribution reports the results from a Norwegian survey designed to measure which of these strategies the general population would prefer in a situation where the government has …
Fairness and family background
Fairness preferences fundamentally affect individual behavior and play an important role in shaping social and political institutions. However, people differ both with respect to what they view as fair and with respect to how much weight they attach to fairness considerations. In this article, we study the role of family background in explaining these heterogeneities in fairness preferences. In particular, we examine how socioeconomic background …
Reward and Responsibility
We look at how one should reward effort without rewarding talent. One way to approach this issue is to ask how an increase in one individual's effort should be allowed to affect the post-tax income of others. The article provides characterizations of three main classes of redistribution mechanism on the basis of how these answer this question
Inequality acceptance in China
Growing inequality poses a fundamental challenge to China’s socialist market economy. In a large-scale comparative study, we examine fairness views and beliefs about the source of inequality in China and compare them with those in two other major economies: the United States and Germany. We find that people in China consider hard work and talent much fairer sources of inequality than luck, and tend to believe that hard work and talent are much mo…
Acceptance of Inequality Between Children
In a novel large-scale experiment, we study how adults in two societies, Shanghai (China) and Norway, make real distributive decisions involving children. We find that acceptance of inequality between children increases with the ages of the children, is affected by the source of inequality and the cost of redistribution, and is lower than acceptance of inequality between adults. We document a large cross-societal difference in inequality acceptan…
The Moral Rationale for International Fiscal Law
A country's right to levy taxes is a fundamental aspect of its sovereignty. Without the power to tax, a government would be unable to redistribute resources among its citizens and provide public goods. The question of how tax rights should be distributed is therefore one of the oldest and most important problems of tax theory. Increased international economic integration has made this question even more important, as a larger share of economic tr…
The Merit Primacy Effect
A long history in economics going back to Adam Smith has argued that people give primacy to merit—rather than luck—in distributive choices. We provide a theoretical framework formalising the merit primacy effect, and study it in a novel experiment where third-party spectators redistribute from high earners to low earners in situations where both merit and luck determine earnings. We identify a strong and consistent merit primacy effect in the spe…
Demand for Childhood Vaccination – Insights from Behavioral Economics
Childhood vaccination is a powerful tool for reducing morbidity and premature deaths, and vaccines are usually provided for free. Despite this, several low‐ and middle‐income countries are lagging far behind in terms of their vaccination coverage. This article uses insights from behavioural economics to shed light on the mechanisms at work when people make decisions about childhood vaccination, thus explaining why demand for vaccination may be lo…
Disability compensation and responsibility
It is a central political goal to secure disabled individuals the same opportunities as others to pursue their conception of a good life. This goal reflects an ambition to combine an egalitarian and a liberal moral intuition. In this article, we analyse how disabled individuals who take part in economic activity should be compensated in order to respect these two intuitions. The article asks how a system of disability compensation should be struc…
Relocating the responsibility cut
Liberal egalitarian theories of justice argue that inequalities arising from non-responsibility factors should be eliminated, but that inequalities arising from responsibility factors should be accepted. This article discusses how the fairness argument for redistribution within a liberal egalitarian framework is affected by a relocation of the cut between responsibility and non-responsibility factors. The article also discusses the claim that equ…
The Moral Rationale for International Fiscal Law
A country's right to levy taxes is a fundamental aspect of its sovereignty. Without the power to tax, a government would be unable to redistribute resources among its citizens and provide public goods. The question of how tax rights should be distributed is therefore one of the oldest and most important problems of tax theory. Increased international economic integration has made this question even more important, as a larger share of economic tr…
Responsibility and Reward
A basic premise of optimal tax theory is that information about individuals' productivity and time worked is unobservable and does not enter into the government's objective function. In this paper, we explore the implications of a framework where earning capacity both plays an intrinsic and an instrumental role. In particular we analyze how a redistributive mechanism should be designed so as to hold people responsible for their work effort, while…
Reward and Responsibility
We look at how one should reward effort without rewarding talent. One way to approach this issue is to ask how an increase in one individual's effort should be allowed to affect the post-tax income of others. The article provides characterizations of three main classes of redistribution mechanism on the basis of how these answer this question
Relocating the responsibility cut
Liberal egalitarian theories of justice argue that inequalities arising from non-responsibility factors should be eliminated, but that inequalities arising from responsibility factors should be accepted. This article discusses how the fairness argument for redistribution within a liberal egalitarian framework is affected by a relocation of the cut between responsibility and non-responsibility factors. The article also discusses the claim that equ…
The Pluralism of Fairness Ideals
A core question in the contemporary debate on distributive justice is how to understand fairness in situations involving production. Important theories of distributive justice, such as strict egalitarianism, liberal egalitarianism, and libertarianism, provide different answers to this question. This paper presents the results from a dictator game where the distribution phase is preceded by a production phase. Each player's contribution is a resul…
Local autonomy and interregional equality
National Responsibility and the Just Distribution of Debt Relief
The Highly Indebted Poor Countries (HIPC) initiative is the largest multilateral effort aimed at providing debt relief. In this essay, we address the question of whether this program is consistent with a view of justice commonly known as liberal egalitarianism. We argue that the HIPC initiative violates two basic liberal egalitarian principles. More generally, we show why the debate on debt relief must move beyond a discussion of whether or not c…
National Responsibility and the Just Distribution of Debt Relief
An abstract is not available for this content so a preview has been provided. Please use the Get access link above for information on how to access this content
Rewarding effort
Fairness and the Development of Inequality Acceptance
Fairness or Equality? Inequality in payments may be seen as inherently unfair, or as appropriate when it reflects differential achievement. Using an economic exchange game, Almås et al. (p. 1176 ) mapped how judgments changed from 5th-grade students to 13th graders: Fifth graders expressed a preference for equal division of rewards, whereas the 13th graders tolerated unequal outcomes, as long as they had been provided with evidence of unequal inp…
Demand for Childhood Vaccination – Insights from Behavioral Economics
Childhood vaccination is a powerful tool for reducing morbidity and premature deaths, and vaccines are usually provided for free. Despite this, several low‐ and middle‐income countries are lagging far behind in terms of their vaccination coverage. This article uses insights from behavioural economics to shed light on the mechanisms at work when people make decisions about childhood vaccination, thus explaining why demand for vaccination may be lo…
Disability compensation and responsibility
It is a central political goal to secure disabled individuals the same opportunities as others to pursue their conception of a good life. This goal reflects an ambition to combine an egalitarian and a liberal moral intuition. In this article, we analyse how disabled individuals who take part in economic activity should be compensated in order to respect these two intuitions. The article asks how a system of disability compensation should be struc…
Just Luck
Choices involving risk significantly affect the distribution of income and wealth in society. This paper reports the results of the first experiment, to our knowledge, to study fairness views about risk-taking, specifically whether such views are based chiefly on ex ante opportunities or on ex post outcomes. We find that, even though many participants focus exclusively on ex ante opportunities, most favor some redistribution ex post. Many partici…
Fairness and family background
Fairness preferences fundamentally affect individual behavior and play an important role in shaping social and political institutions. However, people differ both with respect to what they view as fair and with respect to how much weight they attach to fairness considerations. In this article, we study the role of family background in explaining these heterogeneities in fairness preferences. In particular, we examine how socioeconomic background …
Fairness and the proportionality principle
How to retrench the welfare state
In recent years, many countries have faced pressure to cut the costs of the welfare state, and different strategies have been utilized to achieve this, including stricter eligibility requirements, reduced level of benefits, and reduced maximum duration of benefits. This contribution reports the results from a Norwegian survey designed to measure which of these strategies the general population would prefer in a situation where the government has …
Cutthroat Capitalism versus Cuddly Socialism
There are striking differences in inequality and redistribution between the United States and Scandinavia. To study whether there are corresponding differences in social preferences, we conducted a large-scale international social preference experiment where Americans and Norwegians make distributive choices in identical environments. Combining the infrastructure of an international online labor market and that of a leading international data col…
The Effect of Early-Childhood Education on Social Preferences
We present results from the first study to examine the causal impact of early childhood education on the social preferences of children. We compare children who, at 3-4 years old, were randomized into either a full-time preschool, a parenting program, or a control group. We returned to the children when they reached 6-8 years of age and conducted a series of incentivized experiments to elicit their social preferences. We find that early childhood…
Competitiveness, gender and handedness
We conduct an intercultural experiment in three locations on three different continents to elicit competitiveness and study whether individual differences in competitiveness are related to handedness. Being a "lefty" (i.e., having either a dominant left hand or a dominant left foot) is associated with neurological differences which are determined prenatally, and can therefore be seen as a proxy for innate differences. In large-scale data with inc…
Choice and Personal Responsibility
The principle that people should be held personally responsible for the consequences of their choices is a fundamental moral ideal in Western societies. We report from a large-scale experimental study of how far-reaching this principle is for inequality acceptance. We show that third-party spectators violate minimal conditions for a morally relevant choice when making redistributive decisions for two workers. They accept more inequality when the …
A Meritocratic Origin of Egalitarian Behaviour
We report from a study of how uncertainty about whether a given inequality reflects performance or luck shapes distributive behaviour. We show theoretically that the reaction to uncertainty depends on how people trade-off the probability of making a mistake when redistributing, and the size of this mistake. We show experimentally that uncertainty causes a strong egalitarian pull among a majority of meritocratic individuals. The theoretical framew…
The Merit Primacy Effect
A long history in economics going back to Adam Smith has argued that people give primacy to merit—rather than luck—in distributive choices. We provide a theoretical framework formalising the merit primacy effect, and study it in a novel experiment where third-party spectators redistribute from high earners to low earners in situations where both merit and luck determine earnings. We identify a strong and consistent merit primacy effect in the spe…
Acceptance of Inequality Between Children
In a novel large-scale experiment, we study how adults in two societies, Shanghai (China) and Norway, make real distributive decisions involving children. We find that acceptance of inequality between children increases with the ages of the children, is affected by the source of inequality and the cost of redistribution, and is lower than acceptance of inequality between adults. We document a large cross-societal difference in inequality acceptan…
Linking Social and Personal Preferences
Exercise Improves Academic Performance
We report the results of a randomized controlled trial testing whether incentivizing physical exercise improves the academic performance of college students. As expected, the intervention increases physical activity. The main result is that it generates a strong and significant improvement in academic performance, particularly for students who struggled at the baseline in terms of lifestyle habits. We also provide evidence on the underlying mecha…
Economics (22 works) · Political science (18 works) · Experimental Behavioral Economics Studies (13 works) · Inequality (12 works) · Law (12 works) · Psychology (12 works) · Law and economics (10 works) · Microeconomics (10 works) · Mathematics (9 works) · Sociology (9 works)