American Economic Review
ISSN 0002-8282 (Print) | ISSN 1944-7981 (Online)
Stakes Matter in Ultimatum Games
American Economic Review
vol. 101,
no. 7, December 2011
(pp. 3427–39)
Abstract
One of the most robust findings in experimental economics is that individuals in one-shot ultimatum games reject unfair offers. Puzzlingly, rejections have been found robust to substantial increases in stakes. By using a novel experimental design that elicits frequent low offers and uses much larger stakes than in the literature, we are able to examine stakes' effects over ranges of data that are heretofore unexplored. Our main result is that proportionally equivalent offers are less likely to be rejected with high stakes. In fact, our paper is the first to present evidence that as stakes increase, rejection rates approach zero. (JEL: C72, C78, C91)Citation
Andersen, Steffen, Seda Ertaç, Uri Gneezy, Moshe Hoffman, and John A. List. 2011. "Stakes Matter in Ultimatum Games." American Economic Review 101 (7): 3427–39. DOI: 10.1257/aer.101.7.3427Additional Materials
JEL Classification
- C72 Noncooperative Games
- C78 Bargaining Theory; Matching Theory
- C91 Design of Experiments: Laboratory, Individual