encouraged to bring to the meeting to exchange for real vouchers.<sup>8</sup> The sampling frame was based on the Government of Jordan’s definition of “middle class”: middle-class PSUs were identified as those whose households’average annual per capita expenditure was between twice and four times the poverty line (ESC 2008). Annex 1 provides a detailed explanation of the sample design and the selection protocols.

The decision to focus the experiment on middle-class behavior was driven by the need to study a population of highest relevance to the policy makers considering safety net reform. Such a reform would imply a redistribution of public funds away from the wealthy and the middle class, as both groups were capturing most benefits from universal food and fuel subsidies (Silva, Levin, and Morgandi 2013). The reform under consideration would benefit the poor, who would gain from the increased magnitude of transfers due to targeting and potentially from attaining a more optimal consumption basket, depending on the design of the new safety net.<sup>9</sup> The Jordanian middle class was the group that was likely to loose the most in relative terms from shifts of resources away from universal subsidies towards targeted social safety nets, and that could assemble a suffi ciently large interest group to thwart the reform.

# 2.2 The redistributive proposals

The experiment was conducted on 20 participants in each randomly selected PSU. Upon arrival to the location of the experiment, participants were randomly allocated to either the control or treatment group and invited to enter a corresponding room. At the start of the experiment, each participant received the two vouchers that had been promised at recruitment stage: a JD 5 voucher as a show-up fee and a JD 10 voucher to use in the experiment.<sup>10</sup> The experiment asked participants to make a series of decisions concerning whether to keep their JD 10 fuel voucher or to give it up in exchange for different scenarios (“proposals”) of assistance to the poor. The exact wording of the proposals, intended to mimic the design of social safety net programs, was as follows: P1 (Unconditional cash transfer): “You give up your JD 10 voucher. Our team gives JD 20 cash per family to 5 poor families in this community.” P2 (Unconditional food transfer): “You give up your JD 10 voucher. Our team gives a food basket worth JD 20 per family to 5 poor families in this community.”

> 8 To approximate the experience of subsidy reform, which entails the removal of what is often perceived as a citizen’s right, the experiment activated an endowment effect (Kahneman, Knetch, and Thaler 1991) for the fuel vouchers by creating a sense of ownership using receipts with specified voucher values at the time of recruitment.

> 9 For example, cash transfers would allow poor households to buy goods and services in the amounts providing the highest utility, whereas in-kind transfers (and price subsidies) distort such consumption patterns toward the provided or subsidized goods.

> 10 To strengthen the endowment effect, initiated at recruitment via receipts, the vouchers were handed out at the very beginning of the experiment.

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