A core question in the contemporary debate on distributive justice is how the fair distribution of income is affected by differences in talent and effort. Important theories of distributive justice, such as strict egalitarianism, liberal egalitarianism and libertarianism, all give different...

Can lab experiments on student populations serve to identify the motivational forces present in society at large? We address this question by conducting, to our knowledge, the first study of social preferences that brings a nationally representative population into the lab, and we compare their...

The paper reports the first experimental study on people’s fairness views on extreme income inequalities arising from winner-take-all reward structures. We find that the majority of participants consider extreme income inequality generated in winner-take-all situations as fair, independent of...

We investigate the effects of a large-scale Norwegian reform that provided extra teachers to 166 lower secondary schools with relatively high student-teacher ratios and low average grades. We exploit these two margins using a regression discontinuity setup and find that the reform reduced the...

Using matched administrative election data from Norway, we document gender-specific turnout rates by a range of socio-economic outcomes as well as family relationships and immigrant status. High social rank is consistently associated with higher turnout: we find significant turnout gradients for...

Tax administrations use machine learning to predict risk scores as a basis for selecting individual taxpayers for audit. Audits detect noncompliance immediately, but may also alter future filing behavior. This analysis is the first to estimate compliance effects of audits among high-risk wage...

We investigate the effects of a large-scale Norwegian reform that provided extra teachers to 166 lower secondary schools with relatively high student-teacher ratios and low average grades. We exploit these two margins using a regression discontinuity setup and find that the reform reduced the...

Using matched administrative election data from Norway, we document gender-specific turnout rates by a range of socio-economic outcomes as well as family relationships and immigrant status. High social rank is consistently associated with higher turnout: we find significant turnout gradients for...

Tax administrations use machine learning to predict risk scores as a basis for selecting individual taxpayers for audit. Audits detect noncompliance immediately, but may also alter future filing behavior. This analysis is the first to estimate compliance effects of audits among high-risk wage...

We analyze the change in the urban wage premium over the last 60 years. We focus on differences by gender and skill levels, with an emphasis on changes throughout the earnings distribution. We assess the importance of both changing selection into urban areas, as well as the importance of shifts...