Reply to post: Re: Experimental design

'It's NOT FAIR!' yell RICH KIDS ... and that's a GOOD THING

Steve Knox

Re: Experimental design

First off, they're not changing two: level of income, market type, yes, but also cultural environment, etc.

Second, perhaps the authors of the paper conclude nothing more than that the results are non-generalizable, but that's certainly not Worstall's conclusion:

So it turns out that the inhabitants of poor and non-market economies are much more like that entirely rational homo economicus than we luxuriating in the riches of a capitalist and free marketish one may be – which was a bit of a shock to be quite frank.

Note that Worstall here is concluding not that they are simply more likely to accept because of some unknown factor (such as, possibly, the relative economic value of $1), but specifically because they are more economically rational.

I'm not surprising that it was a bit of a shock, as it doesn't follow from the limited nature of the study. The study only shows that the threshold of "fairness" varies by environment, which should only come as a shock to someone who has no concept of social variety.

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