Publications

June 2008
Article

Minimally Acceptable Altruism and the Ultimatum Game

By: Julio J. Rotemberg

I suppose that people react with anger when others show themselves not to be minimally altruistic. With heterogeneous agents, this can account for the experimental results of ultimatum and dictator games. Moreover, it can account for the surprisingly large fraction of... View Details

Keywords: Philanthropy and Charitable Giving; Game Theory; Mathematical Methods

December 2016
Article

The Effects of Endowment Size and Strategy Method on Third Party Punishment

By: Jillian J. Jordan, Katherine McAuliffe and David G. Rand

Numerous experiments have shown that people often engage in third-party punishment (3PP) of selfish behavior. This evidence has been used to argue that people respond to selfishness with anger, and get utility from punishing those who mistreat others. Elements of the... View Details

Keywords: Third-party Punishment; Norm-enforcement; Strategy Method; Economic Games; Cooperation; Emotions; Fairness

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July 2008
Article

Fairness in Extended Dictator-Game Experiments

By: Felix Oberholzer-Gee and Reiner Eichenberger

We test the robustness of behavior in dictator games by offering allocators the choice to play an unattractive lottery. With this lottery option, mean transfers from allocators to recipients substantially decline, partly because many allocators now keep the entire... View Details

Keywords: Decision Choices and Conditions; Fairness; Game Theory; Risk and Uncertainty; Behavior

Article

Conveniently Upset: Avoiding Altruism by Distorting Beliefs About Others' Altruism

By: Rafael Di Tella, Ricardo Perez-Truglia, Andres Babino and Mariano Sigman

We present results from a “corruption game” (a dictator game modified so that recipients can take a side payment in exchange for accepting a reduction in the overall size of the pie). Dictators (silently) treated to be able to take more of the recipient’s tokens, took... View Details

Keywords: Convenient Beliefs; Cognitive Dissonance; Values and Beliefs; Behavior; Cognition and Thinking

November 2009
Article

Fast or Fair? A Study of Response Times

This paper uses a modified dictator game to investigate the relationship between response times and social preferences. We find that faster subjects more often chose the option with the highest payoff for themselves. Moreover, our within-analysis reveals that, for a... View Details

Keywords: Relationships; Time Management; Social Issues; Decision Choices and Conditions; Management Analysis, Tools, and Techniques; Profit

2010
Working Paper

Conveniently Upset: Avoiding Altruism by Distorting Beliefs about Others

By: Rafael Di Tella and Ricardo Perez-Truglia

In this paper we present the results from a "corruption game" (a dictator game modified so that the second player can accept a side payment that reduces the overall size of the pie). Dictators (silently) treated to have the possibility of taking a larger proportion of... View Details

Keywords: Decision Choices and Conditions; Judgments; Fairness; Values and Beliefs; Game Theory; Personal Characteristics

Article

Changes in Negative Reciprocity as a Function of Age

By: Yoella Bereby-Meyer and Shelly Fiks

Standard economic models assume people exclusively pursue material self-interests in social interactions. However, people exhibit social preferences; that is, they base their choices partly on the outcomes others obtained in a social interaction. People care about... View Details

September 2006
Article

Decomposing Trust and Trustworthiness

By: Nava Ashraf, Iris Bohnet and Nikita Piankov

What motivates people to trust and be trustworthy? Is trust solely "calculative," based on the expectation of trustworthiness, and trustworthiness only reciprocity? Employing a within-subject design, we run investment and dictator game experiments in Russia, South... View Details

Keywords: Trust; Change

26 Jan 2011
Working Paper Summaries

Conveniently Upset: Avoiding Altruism by Distorting Beliefs about Others

Keywords: by Rafael Di Tella & Ricardo Pérez-Truglia

June 2011
Article

Truth in Giving: Experimental Evidence on the Welfare Effects of Informed Giving to the Poor

By: Christina Fong and Felix Oberholzer-Gee

It is often difficult for donors to predict the value of charitable giving because they know little about the persons who receive their help. This concern is particularly acute when making contributions to organizations that serve heterogeneous populations. While we... View Details

Keywords: Philanthropy and Charitable Giving; Policy; Information; Knowledge Acquisition; Game Theory; Prejudice and Bias; Poverty; Welfare

12 Mar 2006
Research & Ideas

New Research Explores Multi-Sided Markets

Xbox, make their profits from game developers through royalties and incur losses on the sale of consoles to users by pricing them below cost. The key reason is that two-sided platforms must solve a chicken-and-egg problem. For example,... View Details

Keywords: by Sean Silverthorne; Technology

July 2015
Article

Prosocial Norms in the Classroom: The Role of Self-regulation in Following Norms of Giving

By: P. R. Blake, M. Piovesan, N. Montinari, F. Werneken and F. Gino

Children who are prosocial in elementary school tend to have higher academic achievement and experience greater acceptance by their peers in adolescence. Despite this positive influence on educational outcomes, it is still unclear why some children are more prosocial... View Details

Keywords: Behavior; Attitudes; Learning; Standards; Education Industry

11 Jan 2000
Lessons from the Classroom

New Game, New Rules: Developing Managers for a Competitive World

respond rapidly whenever necessary. As information technology escalates the pace and complexity of business everywhere, managers can ill afford to operate according to the bureaucratic dictates of the past. As organizations become... View Details

Keywords: by Staff

Article

Heuristics Guide the Implementation of Social Preferences in One-Shot Prisoner's Dilemma Experiments

By: Jillian J. Jordan, Valerio Capraro and David G. Rand

Cooperation in one-shot anonymous interactions is a widely documented aspect of human behavior. Here we shed light on the motivations behind this behavior by experimentally exploring cooperation in a one-shot continuous-strategy Prisoner’s Dilemma (i.e. one-shot... View Details

Keywords: Human Behavior; Social Evolution; Behavior; Cooperation; Decision Making; Game Theory