We elicit distributional fairness ideals of impartial spectators using an incentivized experiment in a large and heterogeneous sample of the German population. We document several empirical facts: (i) egalitarianism is more popular than efficiency- and maxi-min ideals; (ii) females are more egalitarian than men; (iii) men are relatively more efficiency minded; (iv) left-leaning voters are more likely to be egalitarians, whereas right-leaning voters are more likely to be efficiency-minded; and (v) young and high-educated participants hold different fairness ideals than the rest of the population. Moreover, we show that fairness ideals predict preferences for redistribution and intervention by the government, as well as actual charitable giving, even after controlling for a range of covariates. This paper thus contributes to our understanding of the underpinnings of voting behavior and ideological preferences and to the literature that links laboratory measures and field behavior.

我们使用激励实验在大量不同的德国人口样本中得出公正观众的分配公平理想。我们记录了一些经验事实：（i）平等主义比效率和最大最小理想更受欢迎；（ii）女性比男性更平等；（iii）男人相对比较注重效率；（iv）倾向左倾的选民更可能是平等主义者，而倾向右倾的选民则更有效率意识；（v）与其他人群相比，年轻和受过良好教育的参与者拥有不同的公平理想。此外，我们表明，即使控制了一系列协变量，公平理想也可以预测政府对再分配和干预的偏好以及实际的慈善捐赠。