公平与有限信息：人们是贝叶斯式的功绩主义者吗？

中文摘要

本文研究关于不平等来源的信息有限如何影响人们对不平等的接受程度。我们从理论上表明，在理解人们对不平等的分歧时，非贝叶斯式信念更新可能与公平观念的异质性同等重要：在一大类经济环境中，忽视信号的功绩主义者认为平等主义分配是公平的，而忽视基准概率的功绩主义者则认为自由至上主义分配是公平的。我们提供的实验证据表明，秉持功绩主义的旁观者在更新行为上存在显著异质性，并由此导致对不平等接受程度的两极分化。最后，我们表明，第三方旁观者的分配决策最适合由一个同时允许公平观念和信念更新存在异质性的结构模型来解释，其中，信念更新的异质性所导致的不平等接受程度两极分化，是公平观念异质性所导致两极分化的两倍。上述发现有助于更好地理解社会中接受不平等的基础。

Abstract

This paper studies how limited information about the source of inequality affects inequality acceptance. We show theoretically that non-Bayesian belief updating can be as important as heterogeneity in fairness views for understanding disagreements about inequality: in a large class of economic environments, signal-neglecting meritocrats consider the egalitarian distribution to be fair, while base-rate neglecting meritocrats consider the libertarian distribution to be fair. We provide experimental evidence showing significant heterogeneity in the updating behavior of meritocratic spectators, and, as a result, polarization in inequality acceptance. Finally, we show that the distributive decisions of third-party spectators are best explained by a structural model that allows for heterogeneity both in fairness views and belief updating, with heterogeneity in belief updating causing twice as much polarization in inequality acceptance as heterogeneity in fairness views. The findings contribute to better understanding of the foundations of inequality acceptance in society.