On the Relative Strengths of Altruism and Fairness

Jonathan Tan and Friedel Bolle

Theory and Decision, 2006, vol. 60, issue 1, 35-67

Abstract: Some researchers have attributed deviations from selfish behavior to fairness. Violations of fairness theories, however, are observed in experimental dictator games with transfer rates greater than 1 (a transfer of x from the dictator yields an income of tx for the beneficiary, where x > tx): the dictator’s final income is less than the beneficiary’s. We theoretically propose that dictator giving also involves altruism, further supporting our claim with empirical evidence from four separate samples of dictator game experiments. Our nonlinear specification allows the relative measurement of the independent motives in dictator behavior. Copyright Springer 2006

Keywords: altruism; fairness; dictator game; transfer rate; social welfare (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2006
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (16)

Downloads: (external link)
http://hdl.handle.net/10.1007/s11238-005-4752-0 (text/html)
Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.

Related works:
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:kap:theord:v:60:y:2006:i:1:p:35-67

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
http://www.springer. ... ry/journal/11238/PS2

DOI: 10.1007/s11238-005-4752-0

Access Statistics for this article

Theory and Decision is currently edited by Mohammed Abdellaoui

More articles in Theory and Decision from Springer
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Sonal Shukla () and Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing ().