Unconditional Endowment and Acceptance of Taxes: A Lab-in-the-Field Experiment on UBI with Unemployed

IF 1 Q3 ECONOMICS

Basic Income Studies Pub Date : 2024-05-30 DOI:10.1515/bis-2023-0003

Blanca Tena Estrada, Nhat Luong

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引用次数: 0

Abstract

A universal basic income (UBI) would be a guaranteed income floor for both the employed and the unemployed, from which economic theory predicts a gain in bargaining power and a disincentive to work. For high earners, the increase in taxes necessary to fund this program would decrease their motivation to earn. To assess these aspects, we conducted a lab-in-the-field experiment at a State Employment Service office in Spain. The unemployed participants received either an initial unconditional endowment, framed under the logic of the solidarity condition of UBI (UBI treatment) – to examine the taxes’ effect – or as a participation fee (FEE) or no initial endowment (NONUBI). Subsequently, they faced one default randomized task from a set of four paid real-effort tasks. To study bargaining power, they could change the task up to three times and/or skip all tasks and conclude the experiment. In the FEE treatment, they yielded the highest earnings. While we did not find a statistically significant difference in earnings between the FEE and the NON-UBI treatments, the UBI differed from the NON-UBI and FEE. A likely reason could be a crowding-out of motivation by the pressure to reciprocate without believing in other participants’ deservingness of the UBI. In addition, the results reveal that females change tasks more frequently than males.

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无条件禀赋与税收接受：以失业者为对象的全民教育实地实验

全民基本收入（UBI）对就业者和失业者来说都是一个有保障的收入底线，经济学理论预测，这种收入底线会提高议价能力，抑制工作积极性。对于高收入者来说，为该计划提供资金所需的税收增加会降低他们的工作积极性。为了评估这些方面，我们在西班牙的一个国家就业服务办公室进行了一次实验室实地实验。为了考察税收的影响，失业参与者既可以获得无条件的初始馈赠（UBI 处理），也可以获得参与费（FEE）或无初始馈赠（NONUBI）。随后，他们从一组四项有偿实际努力任务中选择一项默认随机任务。为了研究讨价还价的能力，他们可以改变任务最多三次，或者跳过所有任务并结束实验。在 FEE 处理中，他们的收入最高。虽然我们没有发现 FEE 和 NON-UBI 处理之间的收入有显著的统计学差异，但 UBI 与 NON-UBI 和 FEE 有所不同。一个可能的原因是，在不相信其他参与者值得获得统一报酬的情况下，回报的压力挤掉了参与者的积极性。此外，研究结果表明，女性比男性更频繁地更换任务。

本文章由计算机程序翻译，如有差异，请以英文原文为准。

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来源期刊

Basic Income Studies ECONOMICS-

CiteScore

2.40

自引率

18.20%

发文量

期刊介绍： Basic income is a universal income grant available to every citizen without means test or work requirement. Academic discussion of basic income and related policies has been growing in the fields of economics, philosophy, political science, sociology, and public policy over the last few decades — with dozens of journal articles published each year, and basic income constituting the subject of more than 30 books in the last 10 years. In addition, the political discussion of basic income has been expanding through social organizations, NGOs and other advocacy groups. Internationally, recent years have witnessed the endorsement of basic income by grassroots movements as well as government officials in developing countries such as Brazil or South-Africa. As the community of people working on this issue has been expanding all over the world, incorporating grassroots activists, high profile academics — including several Nobel Prize winners in economics — and policymakers, the amount of high quality research on this topic has increased considerably. In the light of such extensive scholarship on this topic, the need to coordinate research efforts through a journal specifically devoted to basic income and cognate policies became pressing. Basic Income Studies (BIS) is the first academic journal to focus specifically on basic income and cognate policies.