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We investigate whether the prospect of redistribution hinders the formation of efficiency-enhancing groups. We conduct an experiment in a Kenyan slum, Ugandan villages, and a UK university town. We test, in an anonymous setting with no feedback, whether subjects join a group that increases their endowment but exposes them to one of three redistributive actions: stealing, giving, or burning. We find that exposure to redistributive options among group members operates as a disincentive to join a group. This finding obtains under all three treatments—including when the pressure to redistribute is intrinsic. However the nature of the redistribution affects the magnitude of the impact. Giving has the least impact on the decision to join a group, while forced redistribution through stealing or burning acts as a much larger deterrent to group membership. These findings are common across all three subject pools, but African subjects are particularly reluctant to join a group in the burning treatment, indicating strong reluctance to expose themselves to destruction by others.

This article argues that public opinion regarding the legitimacy of income differences is influenced by actual income inequality. When income differences are perceived to be high, the public thinks of larger income inequality as legitimate. The phenomenon is explained by the system justification motivation and other psychological processes that favor existing social arrangements. Three experiments show that personal experiences of inequality as well as information regarding national-level income inequality can affect which income differences are thought of as legitimate. A fourth experiment shows that the system justification motivation is a cause of this effect. These results can provide an empirical basis for future studies to assume that the public reacts to inequality with adapted expectations, not increased demands for redistribution.

The presence of a westward-moving frontier of settlement shaped early U.S. history. In 1893, the historian Frederick Jackson Turner famously argued that the American frontier fostered individualism. We investigate the “frontier thesis” and identify its long-run implications for culture and politics. We track the frontier throughout the 1790–1890 period and construct a novel, county-level measure of total frontier experience (TFE). Historically, frontier locations had distinctive demographics and greater individualism. Long after the closing of the frontier, counties with greater TFE exhibit more pervasive individualism and opposition to redistribution. This pattern cuts across known divides in the United States, including urban–rural and north–south. We provide evidence on the roots of frontier culture, identifying both selective migration and a causal effect of frontier exposure on individualism. Overall, our findings shed new light on the frontier’s persistent legacy of rugged individualism.

We use a tailor-made survey on a Swedish sample to investigate how individuals’ relative income affects their demand for redistribution. We first document that a majority misperceive their position in the income distribution and believe that they are poorer, relative to others, than they actually are. We then inform a subsample about their true relative income and find that individuals who are richer than they initially thought demand less redistribution. This result is driven by individuals with prior right-of-center political preferences who view taxes as distortive and believe that effort, rather than luck, drives individual economic success.

We investigate the relationship between inequality, redistribution, and growth using a recently-compiled dataset that distinguishes clearly between market (pre-tax and transfer) and net (post tax and transfer) inequality, and allows us to calculate redistributive transfers for a large number of advanced and developing countries. Across a variety of estiWe mation methods, data samples, and robustness checks, we find: (1) lower net inequality is robustly correlated with faster and more durable growth, controlling for the level of redistribution; (2) redistribution appears benign in terms of its impact on growth, except when it is extensive; and (3) inequality seems to affect growth through human capital accumulation and fertility channels.

The distribution of wealth in the United States and countries around the world is highly skewed. How does visible economic inequality affect well-off individuals’ support for redistribution? Using a placebo-controlled field experiment, I randomize the presence of poverty-stricken people in public spaces frequented by the affluent. Passersby were asked to sign a petition calling for greater redistribution through a “millionaire’s tax.” Results from 2,591 solicitations show that in a real-world-setting exposure to inequality decreases affluent individuals’ willingness to redistribute. The finding that exposure to inequality begets inequality has fundamental implications for policymakers and informs our understanding of the effects of poverty, inequality, and economic segregation. Confederate race and socioeconomic status, both of which were randomized, are shown to interact such that treatment effects vary according to the race, as well as gender, of the subject.

The performance optimization of isolated atomically dispersed metal active sites is critical but challenging. Here, TiO₂@Fe species-N-C catalysts with Fe atomic clusters (ACs) and satellite Fe-N₄ active sites were fabricated to initiate peroxymonosulfate (PMS) oxidation reaction. The AC-induced charge redistribution of single atoms (SAs) was verified, thus strengthening the interaction between SAs and PMS. In detail, the incorporation of ACs optimized the HSO₅⁻oxidation and SO₅ ·− desorption steps, accelerating the reaction progress. As a result, the Vis/TiFeAS/PMS system rapidly eliminated 90.81% of 45 mg/L tetracycline (TC) in 10 min. The reaction process characterization suggested that PMS as an electron donor would transfer electron to Fe species in TiFeAS, generating ¹O₂. Subsequently, the hVB⁺ can induce the generation of electron-deficient Fe species, promoting the reaction circulation. This work provides a strategy to construct catalysts with multiple atom assembly–enabled composite active sites for high-efficiency PMS-based advanced oxidation processes (AOPs).

Why is the difference in redistribution preferences between the rich and the poor high in some countries and low in others? In this article, we argue that it has a lot to do with the rich and very little to do with the poor. We contend that while there is a general relative income effect on redistribution preferences, the preferences of the rich are highly dependent on the macrolevel of inequality. The reason for this effect is not related to immediate tax and transfer considerations but to a negative externality of inequality: crime. We will show that the rich in more unequal regions in Western Europe are more supportive of redistribution than the rich in more equal regions because of their concern with crime. In making these distinctions between the poor and the rich, the arguments in this article challenge some influential approaches to the politics of inequality.

This article studies the consequences of digital surveillance in dictatorships. I first develop an informational theory of repression and co-optation. I argue that digital surveillance resolves dictators' information problem of not knowing individual citizens' true anti-regime sentiments. By identifying radical opponents, digital surveillance enables dictators to substitute targeted repression for nonexclusive co-optation to forestall coordinated uprisings. My theory implies that as digital surveillance technologies advance, we should observe a rise in targeted repression and a decline in universal redistribution. Using a difference-in-differences design that exploits temporal variation in digital surveillance systems among Chinese counties, I find that surveillance increases local governments' public security expenditure and arrests of political activists but decreases public goods provision. My theory and evidence suggest that improvements in governments' information make citizens worse off in dictatorships.

Economie inequality in America is at historically high levels. Although most Americans indicate that they would prefer greater equality, redistributive policies aimed at reducing inequality are frequently unpopular. Traditional accounts posit that attitudes toward redistribution are driven by economic self-interest or ideological principles. From a social psychological perspective, however, we expected that subjective comparisons with other people may be a more relevant basis for self-interest than is material wealth. We hypothesized that participants would support redistribution more when they felt low than when they felt high in subjective status, even when actual resources and self-interest were held constant. Moreover, we predicted that people would legitimize these shifts in policy attitudes by appealing selectively to ideological principles concerning fairness. In four studies, we found correlational (Study 1) and experimental (Studies 2–4) evidence that subjective status motivates shifts in support for redistributive policies along with the ideological principles that justify them.