Home > Research > Publications & Outputs > Rituals of Reason

Electronic data

  • LancasterWP2022_005

    Final published version, 648 KB, PDF document

    Available under license: CC BY-NC: Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License

View graph of relations

Rituals of Reason: A Choice-Based Approach to the Acceptability of Lotteries in Allocation Problems

Research output: Working paper

Published
Publication date23/03/2022
Place of PublicationLancaster
PublisherLancaster University, Department of Economics
Number of pages49
<mark>Original language</mark>English

Publication series

NameEconomics Working Papers Series
Volume2022/005

Abstract

We study revealed preferences towards the use of random procedures in allocation mechanisms. We report the results of an experiment in which subjects vote on a procedure to allocate a reward to half of them. The first possibility is an explicitly random device: the result of a lottery. The second is either an unpredictable procedure they could interpret as meritocratic, or one that is obviously arbitrary. We run all treatments with and without control. We identify an aversion to lotteries and clearly arbitrary procedures across treatments, even though, on aggregate, subjects do not believe any procedure to give them a higher probability of success and there is no correlation between beliefs and outcomes. In line with the literature, we also find evidence of a control premium in most procedures.