期刊名称：CORE Discussion Papers / Center for Operations Research and Econometrics (UCL), Louvain
出版年度：2007
卷号：1
出版社：Center for Operations Research and Econometrics (UCL), Louvain
摘要：Many distributional conflicts are characterized by the presence of acquired rights. The basic structure of
these conflicts is that of the so-called claims problem, in which an amount of money has to be divided
among individuals with differing claims and the total amount available falls short of the sum of the
claims. We describe the results of a questionnaire in which Belgian and German students were
confronted with nine claims problems. In the "Firm" version, respondents had to divide revenue among
the owners of a firm who contribute to the activities of the firm in different degrees. In the "Pensions"
version, they had to divide tax money among pensioners who have paid different contributions during
their active career. Responses in the Pensions version were more egalitarian than in the Firm version.
For both versions, the proportional rule performs very well in describing the choices of the respondents.
Other prominent rules - in particular the constrained equal awards and constrained equal losses rules -
fail to capture some basic intuitions. A substantial part of the respondents tend to become more
progressive as the amount to be distributed decreases other things equal, and tend to become more
progressive as the inequality in the distribution of claims becomes more unequal other things equal. All
of these conclusions are robust with respect to the difference in home-country of the respondents.
