Inequality Aversion or Reciprocity?
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| Title | Inequality Aversion or Reciprocity?
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| Author | Chen Yefeng Zhou Yean and Song Zifeng |
| Organization | School of Economics，Zhejiang University; School of Economics，Renmin University of China; Development Research Center of the State Council |
| Email | lenggone@gmail.com; rendayean@163.com; szifeng-pk@163.com |
| Key Words | Inequality Aversion; Reciprocity; Ultimatum Game |
| Abstract | This paper sheds light on how to test social preferences behind the responders’ rejection in the ultimatum game when the proposers offer a positive allocation. Employing a set of ultimatum game experiments and gathering the experimental data from Zhejiang and Beijing respectively, we make a investgation about the impact of intention-based reciprocity preferences and outcomes-based inequality aversion to human behavior’s decision. Through a mini ultimatum game in which the responder can signal different information about the intentions of the proposer, we found that the identical offers in an ultimatum game generate systematically different rejection rates depending on the other offers that are available to the proposer. The result shows that the reciprocity preferences play an important role in people’s decision. Meanwhile we investigate the mechanism of the inequality aversion through a set of modified ultimatum games. We found that there are 38% and 89% responders’ behavior in guarantor game and impunity game respectively can not be explained by the inequality aversion theory. The result shows that people prefer the intention of allocation more than the outcomes of allocation, which also means that the fairness of allocation process is more than the fairness of allocation outcomes. |
| Serial Number | WP17 |
| Time | 2010-11-26 |
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