Johanna Mollerstrom (George Mason University) 25.5.2023 THURSDAY

It is our pleasure that dr. Johanna Mollerstrom (George Mason University) will present on Thursday, May 25, 2023, at 12:45 in room RB437 about her research on the topic “Lucky to Work“.

Registration is not required and anyone who would like to attend is warmly invited.

BIO:  Johanna Mollerstrom received her Ph.D. in Economics from Harvard University in 2013 and is now an Associate Professor of Economics at George Mason University. Her general research topics are experimental and behavioral economics, gender economics, and public economics. In particular, she is interested in questions related to the demand for redistribution, social preferences, and gender. Before she started out on her academic career she was an elected politician in her home country Sweden.

ABSTRACT: Inequalities are often regarded as more acceptable when they reflect differences in effort, rather than in luck. Effort and luck are, however, often intertwined – elements of luck may decide if an individual can even exert effort. We study redistributive behavior when luck fully determines whether an agent works. Using survey experiments in general population samples in the United States and Sweden, we document how spectators, tasked with redistributing income between agents, grant working agents not only more earnings, but more implied utility, than non-workers. One reason is that pre-redistribution earnings are treated as a stronger reference point when agents work, even when the ability to do so is randomly determined.