Rationality and Emotions in Ultimatum Bargaining: Comment (1)

In his paper "Rationality and Emotions in Ultimatum Bargaining", Shmuel ZAMIR presents four different types of variations of repeated ultimatum games (UG) with random matching after each period. The author stresses the close link between game theory and actuel behavior. The main argument of the papal is that, despite the seeming discrepancy between actant behavior and theoretical predictions, rationality, in the sense of "a rational person prefers receiving any positive amount of money to receiving nothing", is present in the data. However, he does not deny that some part cannot be explained by even short term maximization but rather by other motives. He concludes that we need a model that contains a "richer interpretation of the notion of rationality". In my discussion, I will focus on three issues, some of which are also discussed by ZAMIR, relevant to bridging the gap between the theory and the empirical findings. These issues are choosing the appropriate design, incorporating fairness into a descriptive modal, and analyzing the data in terms of learning in order to disentangle strategic or rational features from emotional or other motives. ZAMIR's paper is an outstanding representation of a variety of experiments within the framework of ultimatum games. These variations exhibit a rich amount of observed and theoretical aspects that is currently discussed in the experimental literature.