DISC Lecture Series: Equity and Equality in Voting on Redistribution: A Real-effort Experiment by Bernhard Kittel

Bernhard Kittel is Professor of Social Science Methodology at the Carl von Ossietzky Oldenburg University, Germany. He has received his PhD from the University of Vienna, having also studied at the University of Essex. Previously, Dr. Kittel has held teaching positions at the Universities of Amsterdam, Bremen and Vienna. He has also been a Research Fellow at the Max Plank Institute for the Study of Societies, in Cologne.

Professor Kittel’s academic research and interests are situated at the crossroads of experimental political science, comparative political economy and social science methodology.

Abstract: The paper investigates the role of desert for group decision making within a real-effort experiment. We study the impact of the shape of the gross earnings distribution that results from prior performance under unanimity and majority rule in three-person societies and control for information content in the deliberative process. Our main result is that right-skewed earning distributions induce the imposition of a uniform net distribution if the best-endowed are not protected by the unanimity rule. The possibility to exchange arguments in a deliberative setting improves the likelihood of consent but does not impact on the level of redistribution.