Rarer Actions: Giving and Taking in Third-Party Punishment Games

Simon Halliday (simon.d.halliday@gmail.com)

No 62, SALDRU Working Papers from Southern Africa Labour and Development Research Unit, University of Cape Town

Abstract: In attempting to understand cooperation, economists have used the methods of experimental economics to focus on spheres of human behavior in which humans display altruism, reciprocity, or other social preferences through giving and through punishment. Recent work has begun to examine whether allowing allocations in the negative domain, that is, allowing subjects to take (or steal) other subjects' endowments, might affect participants' behavior. If participants' behavior is a affected, then our understanding of experimental results generally, and social preferences specifically, should be affected too (List 2007, Bardsley 2008). In this paper we propose an experimental variation on the Dictator Game with third-party punishment (Fehr & Fischbacher 2004b). We examine, first, a basic Dictator Game with third-party punishment, after which we introduce a treatment allowing the dictator to take from the receiver, in the knowledge that the third party could punish them. The results conict. Many dictators choose the most self-interested option, while, when taking is introduced as an option for the dictator, third parties punish the most self-interested option more than in the baseline.

Keywords: Experimental Economics; Social Norms; Punishment; Strong Reciprocity; Social Preferences; Third Party. (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: C91 D63 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 20 pages
Date: 2011-06
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-cbe, nep-evo, nep-exp, nep-gth, nep-hpe and nep-soc
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (1)

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