123 Property Rights and Fairness: A Tale of Two Koreas
- Syngjoo Choi, Byung-Yeon Kim, Jungmin Lee, and Sokbae Lee
- 123 Syngjoo Choi 4.pdf
Abstract
We compare two groups of non-student Korean population—native-born South Koreans (SK) and North Korean refugees (NK)—with contrasting institutional and cultural backgrounds. In our experiment, subjects play dictator games under three different treatments where the source of the income is varied: firstly, the income is exogenously given to the subject; secondly, earned by the subject’s own effort; thirdly, individually earned by the subject and an anonymous partner and then pooled together. We find that preferences for giving depend on the income source in different ways for the SK and NK subjects. The SK subjects become more selfish when an income is individually earned than when it is given exogenously. However, the NK subjects are not responsive to the earned income treatment but behave more pro-socially when individually earned incomes are pooled. The pro-sociality of NK subjects is related to life experiences in North Korea. Our results corroborate the notion that institutions and cultures matter in shaping social norms about distributive fairness.
Keywords: Selfish Behavior, Institutions, Division of Korea, Dictator Game, Earnings
JEL classification: C92; C93; D03; P20