Selfishness, altruism, and inequality aversion toward consumers and farmers
通过经济实验研究人们对农民和普通公众的自私、利他及不平等厌恶动机，发现人们对小农户更利他，且实验选择能预测真实世界收入再分配政策的偏好。
Abstract One hypothesis explaining the persistence of farm programs in the United States is the public's altruism toward farmers. We utilize economic experiments to identify the motivations of selfishness, altruism, and inequality aversion toward anonymous members of the general population and toward different types of farmers. We find that people are generally less selfish and more altruistic toward small farmers than other members of the population. We also find that (i) people are more averse to inequality in a market‐like setting as compared to a nonmarket setting, (ii) there is significant heterogeneity across people in terms of other‐regarding preferences, and (iii) experimental choices accurately predict preferences for “real‐world” income re‐distribution policies that entail giving up one's own money to benefit farmers, but fail to predict preferences for policies that redistribute others’ incomes.