IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/ehu/dfaeii/6574.html

The role of personal involvement and responsibility in dictatorial allocations: A classroom experiment

Author

Listed:
  • Brañas Garza, Pablo
  • Durán, Miguel A.
  • Espinosa Alejos, María Paz

Abstract

This paper explores the motivations behind giving. Specifically, it focuses on personal involvement and responsibility to explain why decision makers give positive amounts in dictatorial decisons. The experiment is designed to uncover these motivations. Subjects face the problem of a dictator.s allocation of an indivisible pie P to one of two players; indivisibility creates an extremely unequal outcome and the dictator is given a chance to correct this outcome at a cost. The willingness to pay to correct the outcome is examined under different scenarios so that we learn about several features concerning preferences.

Suggested Citation

  • Brañas Garza, Pablo & Durán, Miguel A. & Espinosa Alejos, María Paz, 2005. "The role of personal involvement and responsibility in dictatorial allocations: A classroom experiment," DFAEII Working Papers 1988-088X, University of the Basque Country - Department of Foundations of Economic Analysis II.
    • Handle: RePEc:ehu:dfaeii:6574
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://addi.ehu.eus/handle/10810/6574
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Hoffman Elizabeth & McCabe Kevin & Shachat Keith & Smith Vernon, 1994. "Preferences, Property Rights, and Anonymity in Bargaining Games," Games and Economic Behavior, Elsevier, vol. 7(3), pages 346-380, November.
    2. Eckel, Catherine C. & Grossman, Philip J., 1996. "Altruism in Anonymous Dictator Games," Games and Economic Behavior, Elsevier, vol. 16(2), pages 181-191, October.
    3. 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.
    4. Gary E. Bolton & Rami Zwick & Elena Katok, 1998. "Dictator game giving: Rules of fairness versus acts of kindness," International Journal of Game Theory, Springer;Game Theory Society, vol. 27(2), pages 269-299.
    5. 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.
    6. Giovanni Ponti, 2000. "orignal paper: Splitting the baby in two: solving Solomon's dilemma with boundedly rational agents," Journal of Evolutionary Economics, Springer, vol. 10(4), pages 449-455.
    7. Hoffman, Elizabeth & McCabe, Kevin & Smith, Vernon L, 1996. "Social Distance and Other-Regarding Behavior in Dictator Games," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 86(3), pages 653-660, June.
    8. 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)

    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. Pablo Brañas-Garza & Miguel A. Durán & Maria Paz Espinosa, 2009. "The Role of Personal Involvement and Responsibility in Unfair Outcomes," Rationality and Society, , vol. 21(2), pages 225-248, May.
    2. Branas-Garza, Pablo, 2006. "Poverty in dictator games: Awakening solidarity," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 60(3), pages 306-320, July.
    3. Wang, Xinghua & Navarro-Martinez, Daniel, 2023. "Increasing the external validity of social preference games by reducing measurement error," Games and Economic Behavior, Elsevier, vol. 141(C), pages 261-285.
    4. Pablo Brañas-Garza & Antonio Morales, 2005. "Moral Framing in Dictator Games by Short Sentences," ThE Papers 05/06, Department of Economic Theory and Economic History of the University of Granada..
    5. 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 Behavioral Economics 2013_05, Max Planck Institute for Behavioral Economics.
    6. Matteo M. Galizzi & Daniel Navarro-Martinez, 2019. "On the External Validity of Social Preference Games: A Systematic Lab-Field Study," Management Science, INFORMS, vol. 65(3), pages 976-1002, March.
    7. 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.
    8. Sunaina Shrivastava & Gaurav Jain & Dhananjay Nayakankuppam & Gary J. Gaeth & Irwin P Levin, 2017. "Numerosity and allocation behavior: Insights using the dictator game," Judgment and Decision Making, Society for Judgment and Decision Making, vol. 12(6), pages 527-536, November.
    9. Eckel, Catherine & Gintis, Herbert, 2010. "Blaming the messenger: Notes on the current state of experimental economics," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 73(1), pages 109-119, January.
    10. Barmettler, Franziska & Fehr, Ernst & Zehnder, Christian, 2012. "Big experimenter is watching you! Anonymity and prosocial behavior in the laboratory," Games and Economic Behavior, Elsevier, vol. 75(1), pages 17-34.
    11. Ben-Ner, Avner & Putterman, Louis & Kong, Fanmin & Magan, Dan, 2004. "Reciprocity in a two-part dictator game," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 53(3), pages 333-352, March.
    12. Cox, James C. & Friedman, Daniel & Gjerstad, Steven, 2007. "A tractable model of reciprocity and fairness," Games and Economic Behavior, Elsevier, vol. 59(1), pages 17-45, April.
    13. Sadrieh, A., 2003. "Equity versus Warm Glow in Intergenerational Giving," Other publications TiSEM 89f19483-3c73-4838-854f-9, Tilburg University, School of Economics and Management.
    14. John Smith, 2012. "The endogenous nature of the measurement of social preferences," Mind & Society: Cognitive Studies in Economics and Social Sciences, Springer;Fondazione Rosselli, vol. 11(2), pages 235-256, December.
    15. Festré, Agnès & Garrouste, Pierre, 2014. "Somebody may scold you! A dictator experiment," Journal of Economic Psychology, Elsevier, vol. 45(C), pages 141-153.
    16. David B. Johnson & Jonathan Rogers, 2023. "First You Get the Money, Then You Get the Power: The Effect of Cheating on Altruism," Games, MDPI, vol. 14(3), pages 1-21, May.
    17. James Konow & Tatsuyoshi Saijo & Kenju Akai, 2008. "Morals and Mores? Experimental Evidence on Equity and Equality from the US and Japan," Levine's Working Paper Archive 122247000000002055, David K. Levine.
    18. Ramón Cobo-Reyes & Natalia Jiménez, 2012. "The dark side of friendship: ‘envy’," Experimental Economics, Springer;Economic Science Association, vol. 15(4), pages 547-570, December.
    19. Mohlin, Erik & Johannesson, Magnus, 2008. "Communication: Content or relationship?," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 65(3-4), pages 409-419, March.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    ;
    ;
    ;

    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:ehu:dfaeii:6574. 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: Alcira Macías Redondo (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/f1ehues.html .

    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.