Prof. Christina Fong

Taxing the Rich

Do individuals view taxing the rich and helping the poor as the two sides of a single redistributive policy or as distinct decisions about who should benefit and who should pay? This is the question Christina Fong will be addressing in a joint project with Panu Poutvaara. Canonical models usually treat redistribution as a balanced-budget package. Ms. Fong and Mr. Poutvaara separate the two sides using new questions that they wrote for ESS CRONOS2, asking respondents separately whether taxes on high-income employees and benefits and services for low-income employees should rise or fall. The design reveals a systematic asymmetry: people express stronger support for policies directed at the target group they are evaluating than for the corresponding policy that would finance or offset them. The project interprets these asymmetries as a preference for deficit financing within the redistributive system, leaving open whether this reflects a desire to finance redistribution elsewhere, support for deficit finance, or behavioral inconsistency.

Using survey, laboratory, artefactual field-experimental, and field-experimental methods, Ms. Fong’s broader research examines how fairness, self-interest, identity, information, and beliefs about deservingness shape economic behavior and policy preferences. Much of her work asks how moral and social judgments enter redistributive attitudes and prosocial behavior. This agenda includes her research on social preferences, self-interest, and the demand for redistribution; strong reciprocity and the welfare state; empathic responsiveness in giving to welfare recipients; and the monetary value of distributive justice. She also studies how identity, competition, and information shape fairness and economic behavior, including racial group loyalty in giving to Hurricane Katrina victims; fairness and competition; giving and information; and ethnic group loyalty in online hiring discrimination.

Christina Fong is a Senior Research Scientist in the Department of Social and Decision Sciences at Carnegie Mellon University. She holds a PhD in Economics from the University of Massachusetts. Her work has been published in leading journals including the Journal of Public Economics, Journal of Economic Behavior and Organization, American Economic Journal: Applied Economics, Economic Journal and Australian Economic Review.