Over the last decades, research in behavioural economics has demonstrated that individual welfare (utility), as relevant for economic decision making, depends not only on absolut but also on distributional aspects. Moreover, evidence is gathering that something similar holds for aggregate...

Integrating individual inequity aversion into a utilitarian social welfare function, we derive a simple welfare measure which comprises both GDP and income inequality as measured by the Gini-index. The provided theoretical link between inequity aversion (popular in behavioural microeconomics)...

We test for different theories purporting to explain cross-country differences in income redistribution through standardized experimental choices. US Americans and Italians demand less redistribution than Norwegians and Germans, regardless of whether self-interest is relevant. Those earning (or...