Understanding the tradeoff between preferences for redistribution and efficiency is a central question in public finance. Existing experimental work examining this question formalize efficiency in “leaky bucket” choice tasks where possible redistribution schemes are exogeneously pre-selected...

We present the results of an experiment designed to identify more clearly the motivation underlying dictators’ behavior. In the typical dictator game, recipients are given no endowment. We give an endowment to the recipient as well as the dictator. This new dimension allows us to test directly...