Deciding to Delegate: On Distributional Consequences of Endogenous Delegation

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Available from: 
September 2019
Paper author(s): 
Lara Ezquerra
Praveen Kujal
Topic: 
Politics and Economy
Year: 
2019

We allow for principals to self-select into delegating (or not) the allocation decision to an agent in a modified dictator game. The standard dictator game is obtained when they choose not to delegate. Nearly half the subjects choose to be a dictator and make the allocation themselves. Dictators thus obtained transfer lower amounts to receivers, relative to when the decision making is passed to an agent (or the standard dictator game). Subjects self-selecting into the role of a dictator give less relative to those that pass the allocation decision to an agent. Finally, the distributional consequences of delegating, or not, vary with less inequality obtained when the delegation decision is delegated.

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