Data and Code for: Second-best fairness: the trade-off between false positives and false negatives

Principal Investigator(s): View help for Principal Investigator(s) Alexander W. Cappelen, Department of Economics, NHH Norwegian School of Economics; Cornelius Cappelen, Department of Comparative Politics, University of Bergen; Bertil Tungodden , Department of Economics, NHH Norwegian School of Economics

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Name	File Type	Size	Last Modified
replication_package			06/30/2023 06:10:AM

Project Citation:

Cappelen, Alexander W., Cappelen, Cornelius, and Tungodden , Bertil . Data and Code for: Second-best fairness: the trade-off between false positives and false negatives. Nashville, TN: American Economic Association [publisher], 2023. Ann Arbor, MI: Inter-university Consortium for Political and Social Research [distributor], 2023-08-16. https://doi.org/10.3886/E188201V1

Project Description

Summary: A main focus in economics is how to design optimal policies in second-best situations, which often requires a trade-off between giving some individuals more than they deserve, false positives, and others less than they deserve, false negatives. This paper provides novel evidence on people's second-best fairness preferences from large-scale experimental studies in the US and Norway. The majority of people are more concerned with false negatives than with false positives, but we document substantial heterogeneity in second-best fairness preferences between the countries and across the political spectrum. The findings shed light on the political economy of social insurance and redistribution.

Funding Sources: Research Council of Norway (236995); NORFACE Welfare State Future Program, the Einstein Foundation Berlin (EVF-2018-426-2); European Research Council (788433 FAIR – ERC-2017-ADG)

Scope of Project

Subject Terms: false positives; false negatives; second-best fairness; large-scale experiment; redistribution; social insurance; political preferences

JEL Classification:
      D63 Equity, Justice, Inequality, and Other Normative Criteria and Measurement
      D78 Positive Analysis of Policy Formulation and Implementation
      P16 Capitalist Systems: Political Economy
      P51 Comparative Analysis of Economic Systems

Geographic Coverage: United States, Norway

Time Period(s): 2022 – 2022 (Experimental data in the main text); 2019 – 2019 (Experimental data in Study 1, Appendix B); 2015 – 2015 (Experimental data in Study 2, Appendix B)

Collection Date(s): 2022 – 2022 (Experiment in the main paper: summer of 2022); 2019 – 2019 (Study 1 in Appendix B: 2019); 2015 – 2015 (Study 2 in Appendix B: 2015)

Universe: Adult (+18 years of age) population in the United States and Norway.

Data Type(s): experimental data; survey data

Methodology

Sampling: Participants were recruited such that they were nationally representative adults (+18 years of age) on a set of observable characteristics (age, gender and geographical location) for two countries, the United States and Norway.

Data Source: The data collection was organized through the international survey provider Norstat

Unit(s) of Observation: individuals

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Published Versions

V1 [2023-08-16]

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