Discrete-Choice-Experimente zur Ermittlung der Präferenzen für Umverteilung

Abstract

As in most industrialized countries, the inequality regarding the distribution of house-hold incomes in Germany has steadily increased. By collecting taxes and granting mon-etary transfers, the government tries to affect the personal distribution of incomes. Whereas the supply of redistribution is relatively easy to determine, it is rather difficult to identify the determinants of the citizens’ demand for redistribution. Most of the lit-erature concerning the individuals’ preferences for redistribution relies on survey based analysis. A shortcoming of these studies is the failure of imposing a budget con-straint. Discrete-Choice-Experiments (DCE) solve this problem by forcing individuals to take the consequences of their decisions with respect to their own income into ac-count. This study aims at developing a theory based approach to elicit individuals’ preferences for redistribution using DCEs. For the specific case of Germany, we show how to design and implement such a DCE. In particular, we discuss how the price at-tribute in a DCE should be specified and which levels adequately define the price an individual is willing to pay for redistribution. We are able to demonstrate that even for a highly complex topic such as redistribution a correctly applied DCE can provide au-thoritative results. This allows deriving policy implications on how to design redistribu-tive policies which are in line with citizens’ preferences