Give and Take in Dictator Games
23 Pages Posted: 2 Aug 2012
There are 2 versions of this paper
Give and Take in Dictator Games
Date Written: July 6, 2012
Abstract
It has been shown that participants in the dictator game are less willing to give money to the other participant when their choice set also includes the option to take money. We examine whether this effect is due to the choice set providing a signal about entitlements in a setting where entitlements initially may be considered unclear. We find that the share of positive transfers depends on the choice set even when there is no uncertainty about entitlements, and that this choice-set effect is robust across a heterogeneous group of participants recruited from the general adult population in Denmark. The findings are consistent with dictator giving partly being motivated by a desire to signal that one is not entirely selfish or by a desire to follow a social norm that is choice-set dependent.
Keywords: dictator game, choice set, social preferences, experiments
JEL Classification: C91, D63
Suggested Citation: Suggested Citation
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