Envie et réciprocité dans un jeu d'ultimatum concurrentiel. Une étude expérimentale

Most of experimental results about the ultimatum bargaining game demonstrate the persistence of behaviour that deviates strongly from sub-perfect Nash equilibrium predictions. Many contributions ascribe this deviation to the reciprocal fairness which drives the proposer and responder behaviours. This paper investigates reciprocal concern in an one proposer and two responders ultimatum bargaining game. The second responder plays only if the first responder rejects the first offer. Contrary to theoretical prediction of inequality aversion (Bolton and Ockenfelds (forthcoming) and Fehr, Schmidt [1999]), I find that the outcome depends crucially on the reciprocal envy between the two responders, which is founded on two motives : the punishment right for the first responder and the right to play for the second responder. I show that the reciprocal envy erases the reciprocal fairness between proposer and responders in determining the outcome.