TY - JOUR AU - Benabou,Roland AU - Tirole,Jean TI - Belief in a Just World and Redistributive Politics JF - National Bureau of Economic Research Working Paper Series VL - No. 11208 PY - 2005 Y2 - March 2005 DO - 10.3386/w11208 UR - http://www.nber.org/papers/w11208 L1 - http://www.nber.org/papers/w11208.pdf N1 - Author contact info: Roland Bénabou Department of Economics and Woodrow Wilson School Princeton University Princeton, NJ 08544 Tel: 609/258-3672 Fax: 609/258-5533 E-Mail: rbenabou@princeton.edu Jean Tirole Institut d'Economie Industrielle Bureau MF529 - Bat. F 21 allees de Brienne 31000 Toulouse FRANCE Tel: 33-561-128642 E-Mail: marie-pierre.boe@tse-fr.eu AB - International surveys reveal wide differences between the views held in different countries concerning the causes of wealth or poverty and the extent to which people are responsible for their own fate. At the same time, social ethnographies and experiments by psychologists demonstrate individuals' recurrent struggle with cognitive dissonance as they seek to maintain, and pass on to their children, a view of the world where effort ultimately pays off and everyone gets their just deserts. This paper offers a model that helps explain: i) why most people feel such a need to believe in a "just world"; ii) why this need, and therefore the prevalence of the belief, varies considerably across countries; iii) the implications of this phenomenon for international differences in political ideology, levels of redistribution, labor supply, aggregate income, and popular perceptions of the poor. The model shows in particular how complementarities arise endogenously between individuals' desired beliefs or ideological choices, resulting in two equilibria. A first, "American" equilibrium is characterized by a high prevalence of just-world beliefs among the population and relatively laissez-faire policies. The other, "European" equilibrium is characterized by more pessimism about the role of effort in economic outcomes and a more extensive welfare state. More generally, the paper develops a theory of collective beliefs and motivated cognitions, including those concerning "money" (consumption) and happiness, as well as religion. ER -