Elites disproportionately influence policymaking, yet little is known about their fairness and efficiency preferences–key determinants of support for redistributive policies. We investigate these preferences using an incentivized lab experiment with a group of future elites–Ivy League MBA...

Market forces beyond individual control are a central driver of income inequality, a phenomenon we refer to as market luck. In meritocratic societies, this raises the question of whether individuals perceive such inequalities as fair. To address this question, we conduct experiments in the US,...

Market forces beyond individual control are a central driver of income inequality, a phenomenon we refer to as market luck. In meritocratic societies, this raises the question of whether individuals perceive such inequalities as fair. To address this question, we conduct experiments in the US,...

Elites disproportionately influence policymaking, yet little is known about their fairness and efficiency preferences - key determinants of support for redistributive policies. We investigate these preferences using an incentivized lab experiment with a group of future elites - Ivy League MBA...

This paper explores the economic effects of imperfect meritocracy in recruitment and career advancement. We compare two career promotion mechanisms: a fully meritocratic system and a "noisy" one, that allows less productive workers to advance. Our model shows that imperfect meritocracy in...

Surveys and experiments suggest that people hold workers more responsible for income gains stemming from merit, such as education, than circumstances, such as parental education. This paper shows how to design income taxes that account for merits. First, we introduce social welfare functions...

Meritocratic fairness justifies inequality when it stems from performance. Yet performance is influenced by one's genetics. I investigate whether individuals' redistribution preferences are affected by their beliefs about genetics' role in generating performance inequality. In an incentivized...

Can inequality in rewards result in an erosion in broad-based support for meritocratic norms? We hypothesize that unequal rewards between the successful and the rest, drives a cognitive gap in their meritocratic beliefs, and hence their social preferences for redistribution. Two separate...

This paper explores the economic effects of imperfect meritocracy in recruitment and career advancement. We compare two career promotion mechanisms: a fully meritocratic system and a "noisy" one, that allows less productive workers to advance. Our model shows that imperfect meritocracy in...

Meritocratic fairness justifies inequality when it stems from performance. Yet performance is influenced by one's genetics. I investigate whether individuals' redistribution preferences are affected by their beliefs about genetics' role in generating performance inequality. In an incentivized...

Surveys and experiments suggest that people hold workers more responsible for income gains stemming from merit, such as education, than circumstances, such as parental education. This paper shows how to design income taxes that account for merits. First, we introduce social welfare functions...

Can inequality in rewards result in an erosion in broad-based support for meritocratic norms? We hypothesize that unequal rewards between the successful and the rest, drives a cognitive gap in their meritocratic beliefs, and hence their social preferences for redistribution. Two separate...

Many societies aim to design policies based on meritocratic fairness, which involves two principles: (i) paying individuals with equal performance equally (fair equality) and (ii) paying individuals with higher performance more (fair inequality). Yet, often it is impossible to respect both...

Since the 1990s, global cultural shifts driven by neoliberalism have ushered in significant changes in the institutions of citizenship. This has given rise to an increasingly agentic conception of the individual, with strong meritocratic ideological underpinnings, as manifested across a wide...

Many of our most pressing challenges, from combating climate change to dealing with pandemics, are collective action problems: situations in which individual and collective interests conflict with each other. In such situations people face a dilemma about making individually costly but...

We use administrative data from Norway to examine recent trends in the association between parents' prime age earnings rank and offspring's educational performance rank by age 15/16. We show that the intergenerational correlation between these two ranks has increased over the past decades, and...

Meritocracies aspire to reward hard work and promise not to judge individuals by the circumstances into which they were born. However, circumstances often shape the choice to work hard. I show that people's merit judgments are "shallow" and insensitive to this effect. They hold others...

Many of our most pressing challenges, from combating climate change to dealing with pandemics, are collective action problems: situations in which individual and collective interests conflict with each other. In such situations people face a dilemma about making individually costly but...

We use administrative data from Norway to examine recent trends in the association between parents' prime age earnings rank and offspring's educational performance rank by age 15/16. We show that the intergenerational correlation between these two ranks has increased over the past decades, and...

Meritocratic beliefs are defined as people's beliefs in the importance of hard work in societal success relative to other structural factors. As economic inequality grows, the plausibility of fair meritocracy has been called into a question, especially by those left behind by the supposedly...

Since the 1990s, global cultural shifts driven by neoliberalism have ushered in significant changes in the institutions of citizenship. This has given rise to an increasingly agentic conception of the individual, with strong meritocratic ideological underpinnings, as manifested across a wide...

Meritocracies aspire to reward hard work and promise not to judge individuals by the circumstances into which they were born. However, circumstances often shape the choice to work hard. I show that people's merit judgments are "shallow" and insensitive to this effect. They hold others...

1. Social mobility in political science, economics, and sociology -- 2. Meritocracy -- 3. Social mobility -- 4. The social dynamics: an interpretative scheme -- 5. A phenomenon pending between the individual and society -- 6. Inequality of opportunity and inter-generational mobility -- 7. The...

"For decades the principle of advancing and rewarding individuals on the basis of their talents and initiative-on their merit-has been widely accepted as fair and legitimate in private and public sector institutions. Merit is an especially popular concept among the most selective of these...

A meritocratic fairness ideal is generally believed to regard income inequality as fair if it stems from performance differentials rather than luck. In this study, we present experimental evidence showing that merit judgments are shaped by the source of performance differentials while holding...

A meritocratic fairness ideal is generally believed to regard income inequality as fair if it stems from performance differentials rather than luck. In this study, we present experimental evidence showing that merit judgments are shaped by the source of performance differentials while holding...