Fairness Covers and Ethnic Discrimination

We investigate the opportunistic use of fairness ideals in redistribution decisions among members of different ethnic groups. We conduct experiments with large samples of the German and French majority population, where respondents are given the option to redistribute earnings between two workers, one of whom belongs to an ethnic minority group. We implement treatments where all fairness ideals prescribe the same allocation, and ethnic preferences can therefore be easily inferred from redistribution choices, and compare them to treatments where different fairness ideals prescribe different allocations. This multiplicity of rationalizable allocations provides a fairness cover for expressing ethnic preferences through redistribution. We find that individuals with a minority background are, on average, discriminated against but the presence of covers does not increase the extent of discrimination in redistribution.