The distributional preferences of an elite

• Published in: Science (American Association for the Advancement of Science) Vol. 349; no. 6254; p. 1300
• Main Authors: Fisman, Raymond, Jakiela, Pamela, Kariv, Shachar, Markovits, Daniel
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: United States American Association for the Advancement of Science 18.09.2015; The American Association for the Advancement of Science
• Subjects: Administrative Personnel - psychology; Adult; Attitude; Career Choice; Careers; College students; Decision making; Decisions; Decomposition; Employment; Exhibits; Experimental design; Female; Humans; Jurisprudence; Law schools; Maximization; Nonprofit organizations; Organizations, Nonprofit; Panels; Power (Psychology); Predictive Validity; Preferences; Private sector; Professional development; Public Opinion; Public policy; RESEARCH ARTICLE SUMMARY; Research Design; Resource Allocation; Social Justice - psychology; Socioeconomics; Strategy; Students; Studies; United States; Utilities; United States
• ISSN: 0036-8075; 1095-9203
• DOI: 10.1126/science.aab0096

A weighty scholarly tome has sparked a year-long public discussion of the unevenness of income and wealth distributions in the United States. In essence, a few people have a lot of both. Moral philosophers and economists have argued for centuries about the tradeoffs in life strategy that might explain wealth imbalance: between fairness and selfishness, and equality and efficiency. Fisman et al. describe the preferences of a group of elite students at Yale Law School. These elites lean toward selfishness and efficiency more than the average American, and these preferences are reflected in their job choices. Science , this issue p. 10.1126/science.aab0096 Relative to the average American, Yale Law School students are less fair-minded and substantially more efficiency-focused.  We studied the distributional preferences of an elite cadre of Yale Law School students, a group that will assume positions of power in U.S. society. Our experimental design allows us to test whether redistributive decisions are consistent with utility maximization and to decompose underlying preferences into two qualitatively different tradeoffs: fair-mindedness versus self-interest, and equality versus efficiency. Yale Law School subjects are more consistent than subjects drawn from the American Life Panel, a diverse sample of Americans. Relative to the American Life Panel, Yale Law School subjects are also less fair-minded and substantially more efficiency-focused. We further show that our measure of equality-efficiency tradeoffs predicts Yale Law School students’ career choices: Equality-minded subjects are more likely to be employed at nonprofit organizations.