Comparing two-dimensional distributions: a questionnaire-experimental approach

This paper aims to study the extent to which people’s intuitions about the distribution of two attributes within a society are consistent with the different axiomatizations proposed by economists. In particular, the objective is to compare the empirical support for two alternative principles, namely aversion to dispersion of attributes and aversion to correlation between attributes. Using a questionnaire approach, most people are found to be averse to correlation rather than averse to dispersion. Copyright Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg 2015