In medio stat virtus? Effective communication and preferences for redistribution in hard times

This paper evaluates the effects of statistical information on allocation preferences of scarce public resources. We refer to scarce resources in connection with the COVID-19 emergency: allocation of the first round of vaccine and the allocation of financial resources provided by the Italian government to fight the economic emergency triggered by the pandemic. Randomly allocating the information through an online experiment, we show that treated respondents tend to prioritize the group targeted by the information and are more likely to do so if respondents are “in the middle” in terms of age, political preferences, distribution preferences and education.