Research Seminar MicroeconomicsNeed-based Justice versus Unconditional Basic Income: How Should Distributional Conflict Be Solved?Stefan Traub (HSU)
23 January 2020
The Microeconomics Research Seminar welcomes Stefan Traub (Helmut-Schmidt-Universität), who will present his project
"Need-based Justice versus Unconditional Basic Income: How Should Distributional Conflict Be Solved?".
This talk is an invited lecture in the emerging field “Grounds, Causes, Reasons".
Place: Edmund-Siemers-Allee 1, HS K
Hour: 17:15 - 18:45
We are looking forward to seeing you there!
Abstract
The goal of the DFG funded interdisciplinary research group FOR 2104 “Need-based Justice and Distribution Procedures” is to contribute to a positive and empirically informed normative theory of distributional justice. The principle that the distribution of scarce resources has to be aligned to socially or politically recognized needs takes center stage in the research program of FOR 2104. We briefly introduce FOR 2104 and present the results of several economic laboratory experiments dealing with the recognition of needs and the incentive effects of need-based redistribution. We show that most subjects are information-sensitive in their giving behavior in a dictator game, that is, the recipients’ neediness conditions the size of the dictators’ donations. If compared with an unconditional lump-sum transfer, need-based (i.e. conditional) redistribution leads to both more efficient and more unequal group outcomes in an investment task. Our results are in line with the so-called “Boulding Principle”, which holds that people prefer a combination of need (in terms of a social minimum) and desert, and recent empirical evidence from the European Social Survey, which shows high support for need and equity as principles of distributive justice.