Money Burning and Stealing in the Laboratory: How Conflicting Ideologies Emerge

Three experiments on utility interdependence are discussed. Subjects receive money by betting and possibly by arbitrary assignments. They can then pay to reduce and, possibly, redistribute the steal money; in one case, only the decisions of a randomly determined dictator are implemented. The behavior of 80% of burners and redistributors was rank egalitarian. However, arbitrarily advantaged and disadvantaged subjects developed conflicting views of desert: arbitrarily disadvantaged subjects targeted arbitrarily assigned money; arbitrarily advantaged subjects did not care about how money was gained, and, if stealing was allowed, were twice as aggressive against earned money than against money assigned arbitrarily.