New results linking inequality and justice

Abstract

ABSTRACT Recent work revives the classic idea that the sense of justice is the first line of defense against inequality and shows that the link depends, in part, on ideas of the just reward. This paper extends earlier work, making three new contributions: (1) it expands the just reward scenarios from the micro scenarios (which start with the individual's idea of the just reward) to six new macro scenarios (which start with the distribution of everyone's ideas of the just reward); (2) it expands the set of justice measures from three to four, including now the proportion underrewarded; and (3) it obtains results for all the new cases, identifying the conditions that lead to radically different connections between inequality and justice.