Perceived relative income, fairness, and the role of government: Evidence from a randomized survey experiment in China
通过随机调查实验，发现向中国受访者提供财富集中或家庭收入排名信息后，他们更认为社会不公平，但并未要求政府更多干预，这可能与对地方政府信任度下降有关。
Previous studies have shown that Chinese citizens generally are optimistic about their economic opportunities and tolerant of the high levels of inequality in their society. This paper conducts a random survey experiment to examine whether the established views on fairness and inequality change after the respondents receive the general information on wealth concentration or the customized information on their household income ranking. We find that both types of information lead respondents to view society as less fair than they had initially believed. The information on the wealth concentration also increases public concern about social inequality. Nevertheless, neither information offered to the respondents make them think that government should play a more significant role in reducing inequality. This lack of demand for government intervention may be partially explained by a lower level of trust in the local government induced by the two information treatments.