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Do Market Conditions Affect Gift Exchange? Evidence from Experimental Markets

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Author Info
Jordi Brandts (Instituto de Análisis Económico)
Gary Charness (University of California, Santa Barbara)

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Abstract

We study whether behavior in experimental gift-exchange markets with repeated interaction is affected by market conditions. One issue we consider is the impact of competitive imbalance, by varying whether there is an excess supply of firms or an excess supply of workers in the market. Workers might react differently to high wage offers in the two cases, as it may seem that firms are 'forced to be generous' by competitive pressures when there are excess firms. Our second issue concerns the effect of requiring a minimum wage, another sense in which a firm may seem 'forced to be generous'. We impose a minimum wage in the market with an excess supply of workers, and study the overall effect on wages and productivity. While our data show strong deviations from the standard game-theoretic prediction, the patterns of behavior are not fully consistent with either kindness-based models of positive reciprocity or models of distributional utility. The state of competition does not appear to have strong effects in our data; however, there is some evidence of lower productivity when a minimum wage is imposed. Finally, we also present data from single-period sessions that show substantial gift exchange even without repeated interactions.

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Paper provided by Department of Economics, UC Santa Barbara in its series University of California at Santa Barbara, Economics Working Paper Series with number 13-03.

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Date of creation: 01 Mar 2003
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Handle: RePEc:cdl:ucsbec:13-03

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  1. Roth, Alvin E. & Vesna Prasnikar & Masahiro Okuno-Fujiwara & Shmuel Zamir, 1991. "Bargaining and Market Behavior in Jerusalem, Ljubljana, Pittsburgh, and Tokyo: An Experimental Study," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 81(5), pages 1068-95, December. [Downloadable!] (restricted)
  2. Gary Charness & Guillaume Frechette & John Kagel, 2002. "How Robust is Laboratory Gift Exchange?," University of California at Santa Barbara, Economics Working Paper Series 10-03, Department of Economics, UC Santa Barbara. [Downloadable!]
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  3. Brandts, Jordi & Sola, Carles, 2001. "Reference Points and Negative Reciprocity in Simple Sequential Games," Games and Economic Behavior, Elsevier, vol. 36(2), pages 138-157, August. [Downloadable!] (restricted)
  4. Akerlof, George A, 1982. "Labor Contracts as Partial Gift Exchange," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, MIT Press, vol. 97(4), pages 543-69, November. [Downloadable!] (restricted)
  5. Offerman, Theo, 2002. "Hurting hurts more than helping helps," European Economic Review, Elsevier, vol. 46(8), pages 1423-1437, September. [Downloadable!] (restricted)
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  7. Fehr, Ernst, et al, 1998. "When Social Norms Overpower Competition: Gift Exchange in Experimental Labor Markets," Journal of Labor Economics, University of Chicago Press, vol. 16(2), pages 324-51, April. [Downloadable!] (restricted)
  8. Clark, Kenneth & Sefton, Martin, 2001. "The Sequential Prisoner's Dilemma: Evidence on Reciprocation," Economic Journal, Royal Economic Society, vol. 111(468), pages 51-68, January. [Downloadable!] (restricted)
  9. Gary E. Bolton & Axel Ockenfels, 2000. "ERC: A Theory of Equity, Reciprocity, and Competition," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 90(1), pages 166-193, March. [Downloadable!] (restricted)
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  12. Amartya Sen, 1997. "Maximization and the Act of Choice," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 65(4), pages 745-780, July.
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  13. Fehr, Ernst & Kirchsteiger, Georg & Riedl, Arno, 1998. "Gift exchange and reciprocity in competitive experimental markets," European Economic Review, Elsevier, vol. 42(1), pages 1-34, January. [Downloadable!] (restricted)
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  14. Gary Bolton & Jordi Brandts & Axel Ockenfels, 1998. "Measuring Motivations for the Reciprocal Responses Observed in a Simple Dilemma Game," Experimental Economics, Springer, vol. 1(3), pages 207-219, December. [Downloadable!] (restricted)
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  15. Rabin, Matthew, 1993. "Incorporating Fairness into Game Theory and Economics," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 83(5), pages 1281-1302, December. [Downloadable!] (restricted)
  16. Berg Joyce & Dickhaut John & McCabe Kevin, 1995. "Trust, Reciprocity, and Social History," Games and Economic Behavior, Elsevier, vol. 10(1), pages 122-142, July. [Downloadable!] (restricted)
  17. Fehr, Ernst & Kirchsteiger, George & Riedl, Arno, 1993. "Does Fairness Prevent Market Clearing? An Experimental Investigation," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, MIT Press, vol. 108(2), pages 437-59, May. [Downloadable!] (restricted)
  18. Samuel Bowles, 1998. "Endogenous Preferences: The Cultural Consequences of Markets and Other Economic Institutions," Journal of Economic Literature, American Economic Association, vol. 36(1), pages 75-111, March. [Downloadable!] (restricted)
  19. Ernst Fehr & Klaus M. Schmidt, 1999. "A Theory Of Fairness, Competition, And Cooperation," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, MIT Press, vol. 114(3), pages 817-868, August. [Downloadable!] (restricted)
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  20. Ernst Fehr & Armin Falk, 1999. "Wage Rigidity in a Competitive Incomplete Contract Market," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 107(1), pages 106-134, February. [Downloadable!] (restricted)
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