When are high earnings considered a legitimate target for redistribution, and when not? We design a real-effort laboratory experiment in which we manipulate the assignment of payrates (societal ‘reward rules') that translate performance on a real-effort counting task into pre-tax earnings. We...

This study analyzes whether enabling people to get informed about redistributive consequences is an effective measure to prevent equivalence framing in the domain of voting on redistribution. Utilizing a simplified version of the Meltzer-Richard model, an equivalent frame is induced by letting...

Policymakers generally have powerful incentives to attract votes by strategically manipulating public policies, for instance by increasing public spending during election periods or by implementing ideologically valued policies for their electoral base. At first sight, public theaters and...

Utilizing a simplified version of the Meltzer-Richard redistribution mechanism we designed a laboratory experiment to test whether it matters if voters were asked to decide on a tax rate or minimum income, leaving the redistribution mechanism itself unchanged. Framing the vote about...