IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/eee/gamebe/v119y2020icp309-338.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Rational altruism? On preference estimation and dictator game experiments

Author

Listed:
  • Grech, Philip D.
  • Nax, Heinrich H.

Abstract

Experimental implementations of dictator games are found to differ in terms of their underlying strategic incentives. We explore this discovery in two separate directions. Theoretically, assuming identical other-regarding preferences, we show that the two most widely used protocols can generate strongly contrasting rational-choice predictions, from which different interpretations of dictator giving arise. Experimentally, a tailor-made experiment reveals significant differences between the two protocols but rejects full rationality as a satisfactory explanatory theory. Our findings indicate that several previously drawn conclusions regarding other-regarding preferences among humans distinguished by social class, gender, generation, nationality, etc. may be more ambiguous than hitherto believed.

Suggested Citation

  • Grech, Philip D. & Nax, Heinrich H., 2020. "Rational altruism? On preference estimation and dictator game experiments," Games and Economic Behavior, Elsevier, vol. 119(C), pages 309-338.
    • Handle: RePEc:eee:gamebe:v:119:y:2020:i:c:p:309-338
    DOI: 10.1016/j.geb.2019.10.004
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0899825619301502
    Download Restriction: Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1016/j.geb.2019.10.004?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to search for a different version of it.

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Pamela Jakiela, 2013. "Equity vs. efficiency vs. self-interest: on the use of dictator games to measure distributional preferences," Experimental Economics, Springer;Economic Science Association, vol. 16(2), pages 208-221, June.
    2. Gary Charness & Matthew Rabin, 2002. "Understanding Social Preferences with Simple Tests," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 117(3), pages 817-869.
    3. Li, Jing & Dow, William H & Kariv, Shachar, 2017. "Social preferences of future physicians," Department of Economics, Working Paper Series qt5vw9g5tj, Department of Economics, Institute for Business and Economic Research, UC Berkeley.
    4. Ernst Fehr & Klaus M. Schmidt, 1999. "A Theory of Fairness, Competition, and Cooperation," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 114(3), pages 817-868.
    5. Korenok, Oleg & Millner, Edward L. & Razzolini, Laura, 2013. "Impure altruism in dictators' giving," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 97(C), pages 1-8.
    6. Raymond Fisman & Shachar Kariv & Daniel Markovits, 2007. "Individual Preferences for Giving," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 97(5), pages 1858-1876, December.
    7. Kahneman, Daniel & Knetsch, Jack L & Thaler, Richard H, 1986. "Fairness and the Assumptions of Economics," The Journal of Business, University of Chicago Press, vol. 59(4), pages 285-300, October.
    8. Douglas M. Gale & Shachar Kariv & Syngjoo Choi & Raymond Fisman, 2007. "Revealing Preferences Graphically: An Old Method Gets a New Tool Kit," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 97(2), pages 153-158, May.
    9. Robert M. Solow, 1956. "A Contribution to the Theory of Economic Growth," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 70(1), pages 65-94.
    10. Afriat, Sidney N, 1972. "Efficiency Estimation of Production Function," International Economic Review, Department of Economics, University of Pennsylvania and Osaka University Institute of Social and Economic Research Association, vol. 13(3), pages 568-598, October.
    11. Philip D. Grech, 2019. "Give and Let Give: Alternative Mechanisms Based on Voluntary Contributions," Games, MDPI, vol. 10(2), pages 1-11, May.
    12. Mäs, Michael & Nax, Heinrich H., 2016. "A behavioral study of “noise” in coordination games," Journal of Economic Theory, Elsevier, vol. 162(C), pages 195-208.
    13. Nagore Iriberri & Pedro Rey-Biel, 2011. "The role of role uncertainty in modified dictator games," Experimental Economics, Springer;Economic Science Association, vol. 14(2), pages 160-180, May.
    14. James Andreoni & Lise Vesterlund, 2001. "Which is the Fair Sex? Gender Differences in Altruism," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 116(1), pages 293-312.
    15. repec:cup:judgdm:v:6:y:2011:i:8:p:771-781 is not listed on IDEAS
    16. Erin L. Krupka & Roberto A. Weber, 2013. "Identifying Social Norms Using Coordination Games: Why Does Dictator Game Sharing Vary?," Journal of the European Economic Association, European Economic Association, vol. 11(3), pages 495-524, June.
    17. Nax, Heinrich H. & Murphy, Ryan O. & Ackermann, Kurt A., 2015. "Interactive preferences," Economics Letters, Elsevier, vol. 135(C), pages 133-136.
    18. Andreoni, James, 1989. "Giving with Impure Altruism: Applications to Charity and Ricardian Equivalence," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 97(6), pages 1447-1458, December.
    19. Andreoni, James, 1990. "Impure Altruism and Donations to Public Goods: A Theory of Warm-Glow Giving?," Economic Journal, Royal Economic Society, vol. 100(401), pages 464-477, June.
    20. Axel Ockenfels & Gary E. Bolton, 2000. "ERC: A Theory of Equity, Reciprocity, and Competition," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 90(1), pages 166-193, March.
    21. Christoph Engel, 2011. "Dictator games: a meta study," Experimental Economics, Springer;Economic Science Association, vol. 14(4), pages 583-610, November.
    22. Forsythe Robert & Horowitz Joel L. & Savin N. E. & Sefton Martin, 1994. "Fairness in Simple Bargaining Experiments," Games and Economic Behavior, Elsevier, vol. 6(3), pages 347-369, May.
    23. Chen, Yi-Chun & Long, Ngo Van & Luo, Xiao, 2007. "Iterated strict dominance in general games," Games and Economic Behavior, Elsevier, vol. 61(2), pages 299-315, November.
    24. Fisman, Raymond & Jakiela, Pamela & Kariv, Shachar, 2015. "How did distributional preferences change during the Great Recession?," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 128(C), pages 84-95.
    25. Vincent P. Crawford & Miguel A. Costa-Gomes & Nagore Iriberri, 2013. "Structural Models of Nonequilibrium Strategic Thinking: Theory, Evidence, and Applications," Journal of Economic Literature, American Economic Association, vol. 51(1), pages 5-62, March.
    26. Matthew Polisson & John K.-H. Quah, 2013. "Revealed Preference in a Discrete Consumption Space," American Economic Journal: Microeconomics, American Economic Association, vol. 5(1), pages 28-34, February.
    27. Oechssler, Jörg, 2010. "Searching beyond the lamppost: Let's focus on economically relevant questions," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 73(1), pages 65-67, January.
    28. Martin Dufwenberg & Paul Heidhues & Georg Kirchsteiger & Frank Riedel & Joel Sobel, 2011. "Other-Regarding Preferences in General Equilibrium," The Review of Economic Studies, Review of Economic Studies Ltd, vol. 78(2), pages 613-639.
    29. Polisson, Matthew & Renou, Ludovic, 2016. "Afriat’s Theorem and Samuelson’s ‘Eternal Darkness’," Journal of Mathematical Economics, Elsevier, vol. 65(C), pages 36-40.
    30. Ananish Chaudhuri, 2011. "Sustaining cooperation in laboratory public goods experiments: a selective survey of the literature," Experimental Economics, Springer;Economic Science Association, vol. 14(1), pages 47-83, March.
    31. Nava Ashraf & Iris Bohnet & Nikita Piankov, 2006. "Decomposing trust and trustworthiness," Experimental Economics, Springer;Economic Science Association, vol. 9(3), pages 193-208, September.
    32. Fisman, Raymond & Jakiela, Pamela & Kariv, Shachar, 2017. "Distributional preferences and political behavior," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 155(C), pages 1-10.
    33. Colin F. Camerer & Teck-Hua Ho & Juin-Kuan Chong, 2004. "A Cognitive Hierarchy Model of Games," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 119(3), pages 861-898.
    34. Matthias Greiff & Kurt A. Ackermann & Ryan O. Murphy, 2018. "Playing a Game or Making a Decision? Methodological Issues in the Measurement of Distributional Preferences," Games, MDPI, vol. 9(4), pages 1-25, October.
    35. Steven D. Levitt & John A. List, 2007. "What Do Laboratory Experiments Measuring Social Preferences Reveal About the Real World?," Journal of Economic Perspectives, American Economic Association, vol. 21(2), pages 153-174, Spring.
    36. Mäs, Michael & Nax, Heinrich H., 2016. "A behavioral study of “noise” in coordination games," LSE Research Online Documents on Economics 65422, London School of Economics and Political Science, LSE Library.
    37. James Andreoni & John Miller, 2002. "Giving According to GARP: An Experimental Test of the Consistency of Preferences for Altruism," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 70(2), pages 737-753, March.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Keigo Inukai & Yuta Shimodaira & Kohei Shiozawa, 2022. "Empirical properties of an extended CES utility function in representing distributional preferences," ISER Discussion Paper 1199, Institute of Social and Economic Research, Osaka University.
    2. Henri Kuokkanen & Frederic Bouchon, 2021. "When team play matters: Building revenue management in tourism destinations," Tourism Economics, , vol. 27(2), pages 379-397, March.
    3. Robbins, Blaine G & Karell, Daniel & Siegenthaler, Simon & Kamm, Aaron, 2023. "Pathways to Prosocial Leadership: An Online Experiment on the Effects of External Subsidies and the Relative Price of Giving," SocArXiv 3umys, Center for Open Science.
    4. Philip D. Grech & Heinrich H. Nax & Adrian Soos, 2022. "Incentivization matters: a meta-perspective on dictator games," Journal of the Economic Science Association, Springer;Economic Science Association, vol. 8(1), pages 34-44, December.
    5. Benjamin Ouvrard & Arnaud Reynaud & Stéphane Cezera & Alban Thomas & Dishant Jojit James & Murudaiah Shivamurthy, 2023. "Distributive Justice in the Field: How do Indian Farmers Share Water? ," Working Papers hal-04150233, HAL.
    6. Luciano Andreozzi & Marco Faillo & Ali Seyhun Saral, 2021. "Reciprocity in Dictator Games: An Experimental Study," CEEL Working Papers 2101, Cognitive and Experimental Economics Laboratory, Department of Economics, University of Trento, Italia.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Gauriot, Romain & Heger, Stephanie A. & Slonim, Robert, 2020. "Altruism or diminishing marginal utility?," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 180(C), pages 24-48.
    2. Breitmoser, Yves & Vorjohann, Pauline, 2018. "Welfare-Based Altruism," Rationality and Competition Discussion Paper Series 89, CRC TRR 190 Rationality and Competition.
    3. Breitmoser, Yves & Vorjohann, Pauline, 2022. "Fairness-based Altruism," Center for Mathematical Economics Working Papers 666, Center for Mathematical Economics, Bielefeld University.
    4. Walkowitz, Gari, 2021. "Dictator game variants with probabilistic (and cost-saving) payoffs: A systematic test," Journal of Economic Psychology, Elsevier, vol. 85(C).
    5. Crawford, Ian & Harris, Donna, 2018. "Social interactions and the influence of “extremists”," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 153(C), pages 238-266.
    6. Kerschbamer, Rudolf & Müller, Daniel, 2020. "Social preferences and political attitudes: An online experiment on a large heterogeneous sample," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 182(C).
    7. Thorsten Chmura & Christoph Engel & Markus Englerth, 2013. "Selfishness As a Potential Cause of Crime. A Prison Experiment," Discussion Paper Series of the Max Planck Institute for Research on Collective Goods 2013_05, Max Planck Institute for Research on Collective Goods.
    8. Erik O. Kimbrough & Alexander Vostroknutov, 2016. "Norms Make Preferences Social," Journal of the European Economic Association, European Economic Association, vol. 14(3), pages 608-638, June.
    9. Laurent Denant-Boemont & Matthieu Leprince & Matthieu Pourieux, 2019. "Distributive Preferences of Public Representatives: A Field-in-the-Lab Experiment," Economics Working Paper from Condorcet Center for political Economy at CREM-CNRS 2019-05-ccr, Condorcet Center for political Economy.
    10. Korenok, Oleg & Millner, Edward L. & Razzolini, Laura, 2018. "Taking aversion," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 150(C), pages 397-403.
      • Korenok Oleg & Edward L. Millner & Laura Razzolini, 2017. "Taking Aversion," Working Papers 1702, VCU School of Business, Department of Economics.
    11. Hong, Hao & Ding, Jianfeng & Yao, Yang, 2015. "Individual social welfare preferences: An experimental study," Journal of Behavioral and Experimental Economics (formerly The Journal of Socio-Economics), Elsevier, vol. 57(C), pages 89-97.
    12. Chowdhury, Subhasish M. & Jeon, Joo Young, 2014. "Impure altruism or inequality aversion?: An experimental investigation based on income effects," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 118(C), pages 143-150.
    13. Emin Karagözoğlu & Elif Tosun, 2022. "Endogenous Game Choice and Giving Behavior in Distribution Games," Games, MDPI, vol. 13(6), pages 1-32, November.
    14. Korenok, Oleg & Millner, Edward L. & Razzolini, Laura, 2013. "Impure altruism in dictators' giving," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 97(C), pages 1-8.
    15. Bart J. Wilson, 2012. "Contra Private Fairness," American Journal of Economics and Sociology, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 71(2), pages 407-435, April.
    16. Engel, Christoph & Goerg, Sebastian J., 2018. "If the worst comes to the worst: Dictator giving when recipient’s endowments are risky," European Economic Review, Elsevier, vol. 105(C), pages 51-70.
    17. Deb, Rahul & Gazzale, Robert S. & Kotchen, Matthew J., 2014. "Testing motives for charitable giving: A revealed-preference methodology with experimental evidence," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 120(C), pages 181-192.
    18. Walkowitz, Gari, 2019. "On the Validity of Probabilistic (and Cost-Saving) Incentives in Dictator Games: A Systematic Test," MPRA Paper 91541, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    19. Priyodorshi Banerjee & Sujoy Chakravarty, 2021. "Dictator choice and causal attribution of recipient endowment," Indian Economic Review, Springer, vol. 56(2), pages 351-373, December.
    20. Kim, Byung-Yeon & Choi, Syngjoo & Lee, Jungmin & Lee, Sokbae & Choi, Kyunghui, 2017. "Do Institutions Affect Social Preferences? Evidence from Divided Korea," Journal of Comparative Economics, Elsevier, vol. 45(4), pages 865-888.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    Altruism; Charitable giving; Dictator games; CES utility functions; Distributional preferences; Social preferences; Experimental economics; Foundations;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • A13 - General Economics and Teaching - - General Economics - - - Relation of Economics to Social Values
    • C72 - Mathematical and Quantitative Methods - - Game Theory and Bargaining Theory - - - Noncooperative Games
    • D01 - Microeconomics - - General - - - Microeconomic Behavior: Underlying Principles
    • D64 - Microeconomics - - Welfare Economics - - - Altruism; Philanthropy; Intergenerational Transfers

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:eee:gamebe:v:119:y:2020:i:c:p:309-338. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Catherine Liu (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.elsevier.com/locate/inca/622836 .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.