Paradigmatic Experiments: the Dictator Game

Francesco Guala and Luigi Mittone

No 807, CEEL Working Papers from Cognitive and Experimental Economics Laboratory, Department of Economics, University of Trento, Italia

Abstract: Recent experiments with the Dictator Game (and the ensuing discussions) have been affected by considerable confusion regarding the purpose of this design. A common complaint is that the design gives rise to fragile regularities and therefore is of little use for theory-testing. We take issue with this view, and instead argue that the Dictator Game is potentially a very useful tool for experimental game theory, if properly used. It is particularly useful for investigating social norms, but economists have failed to take advantage of the Dictator Game because they still lack an adequate theory of norms.

Date: 2008
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-cbe, nep-exp, nep-gth and nep-hpe
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (1)

Downloads: (external link)
http://www-ceel.economia.unitn.it/papers/papero08_07.pdf (application/pdf)

Related works:
Journal Article: Paradigmatic experiments: The Dictator Game (2010)
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:trn:utwpce:0807

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in CEEL Working Papers from Cognitive and Experimental Economics Laboratory, Department of Economics, University of Trento, Italia Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Marco Tecilla ( this e-mail address is bad, please contact ).