
Unpublished Paper
Yours, Mine, and Ours: The Effect of Ersatz Property Rights on Outcome Based Fairness and Reciprocity
Economics Department Working Paper Series
(2004)
Abstract
We report laboratory data on earned wealth effects in a series of anonymous dictator bargaining games. In addition to a standard (baseline) treatment in which the wealth to be bargained over was determined by the experimenter, we conduct treatments in which either the dictator or the receiver earned the wealth used in a subsequent bargaining phase. In our baseline treatment, we observe the standard result: on average, dictators offer receivers 20%. In treatments where the sender (i.e. dictator) earned wealth, we observe the theoretic prediction of zero offers to receivers. In treatments where the receiver earned wealth, we observe many hyper-fair offers (i.e. offers greater than 50%). We interpret these results as evidence of the importance of property rights in determining individuals’ social preferences.
Keywords
- Dictator Games,
- Earned Wealth Effects,
- Experiments,
- Social Preferences
Disciplines
Publication Date
2004
Citation Information
Robert J. Oxoby and John M. Spraggon. "Yours, Mine, and Ours: The Effect of Ersatz Property Rights on Outcome Based Fairness and Reciprocity" Economics Department Working Paper Series (2004) Available at: http://works.bepress.com/john_spraggon/5/