 The sequencing of gift exchange: A field trialJournal of Economic Behavior & Organization, 2017, vol. 139, issue C, 26-31 Abstract: There is now an extensive literature on “gift exchange” showing that when principals and agents can trade “gifts” (rewards that should not emerge in a competitive equilibrium), exchange becomes more efficient. However, it is not obvious how gift exchange should be organized if the principal's goal is to increase the performance of a reciprocal agent. Specifically, who should make the first gift, the principal or the agent? Although both orderings, by themselves, have been hypothesized and examined in theory and experiments, the literature is largely silent on the comparison. I report the results of a field experiment that compares the principal-first and agent-first orderings to each other and a gift-less control. Consistent with the previous experimental literature, I find that principal-first, gifts do increase agent performance. Unlike the literature, however, I find that agent-first, gifts are also effective. Comparing the two, I see that the agent-first ordering works best, is clearly cheaper to implement and differences appear on both the extensive and intensive margins. Keywords: Gift exchange; Reciprocity; Social norm; Incentives; Field experiment; Charity; Fundraising (search for similar items in EconPapers) Downloads: (external link) Related works: Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:eee:jeborg:v:139:y:2017:i:c:p:26-31 DOI: 10.1016/j.jebo.2017.04.019 Access Statistics for this article Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization is currently edited by Houser, D. and Puzzello, D. More articles in Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization from Elsevier |
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