Rituals of Reason: A Choice-Based Approach to the Acceptability of Lotteries in Allocation Problems
The latest version of the paper is available here and the Online Appendices. The code for the treatment of the data is available on Gitlab here at the repo rituals-of-reasons-reproduction and the research data here. Currently Revise & Resubmit at Games and Economic Behavior.
Abstract
We study collective preferences towards the use of random procedures in allocation mechanisms. We report the results of two experiments in which subjects choose 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 an equally unpredictable procedure with identical rate of success, but not involving any explicit randomization. We identify an aversion to lotteries, in particular against procedures that are reminiscent of meritocratic ones. In line with the literature, we also find evidence of a preference for control in most procedures.
Bibtex Citation
For the paper:
@unpublished{bouacida:hal-04300926,
TITLE = {{Rituals of Reason: Experimental Evidence on the Social Acceptability of Lotteries in Allocation Problems}},
AUTHOR = {Bouacida, Elias and Foucart, Renaud},
URL = {https://hal.science/hal-04300926},
NOTE = {working paper or preprint},
YEAR = {2024},
MONTH = Oct,
KEYWORDS = {Lotteries ; Mechanism design ; Allocation problems ; Procedures ; Tie-breaking rule ; Social choice},
PDF = {https://hal.science/hal-04300926v3/file/R_R_rock_paper_scissor-1.pdf},
HAL_ID = {hal-04300926},
HAL_VERSION = {v3},
}For the data:
@data{NZTMN9_2024,
author = {Bouacida, Elias and Foucart, Renaud},
publisher = {Recherche Data Gouv},
title = {{Données de réplication pour : Rituals of Reasons: A Choice-Based Approach to the Acceptability of Lotteries in Allocation Problems}},
UNF = {UNF:6:WMWaP7x55KMxLV190+CM/Q==},
year = {2024},
version = {V1},
doi = {10.57745/NZTMN9},
url = {https://doi.org/10.57745/NZTMN9}
}