Inequity Concerns in Social Networks

This paper explores the role of social integration on inequity concerns. Using a three-phase experimental protocol we Örst elicit a social network from a group of undergraduate students in Economics; in the second phase, 169 of these subjects have to assign a Öxed amount of money to only one of two individuals and, then, in the third stage they decide how much they are willing to pay to "repair" the created inequality. Our experi- mental data indicate that standard measures of network theory, such as betweenness, out-degree and reciprocal degree, have a positive e§ect on inequity concerns. These results suggest that (1) pro-sociality and social networks coevolve and (2) information on the social network structure, in which subjects are embedded is important to account for their behavior.