Fair Procedures: Evidence from Games Involving Lotteries

It is found that an unbiased random procedure is an acceptable substitute for an unbiased allocation: similar patterns of acceptance and rejection result when either is inserted as a feasible proposal in a sequential battle-of-the-sexes.

Abstract

Procedures are the area where fairness arguably has its largest influence on modern societies. The experiments we report provide an initial characterisation of that influence and suggest new interpretations for some well‐known results. We find that procedural fairness is conceptually distinct from allocation fairness, although the evidence also indicates that the two are linked in important ways. Post hoc extension of one of the current models of fairness illustrates this link and implies that a deeper understanding of procedural fairness will require investigation of competing fairness norms. If a number of persons engage in a series of fair bets, the distribution of cash after the last bet is fair, or at least not unfair, whatever this distribution is. John Rawls (1971)