Altruism, equity and reciprocity in a gift-exchange experiment: An encompassing approach

Gary Charness and Ernan Haruvy

Economics Working Papers from Department of Economics and Business, Universitat Pompeu Fabra

Abstract: Considerable experimental evidence suggests that non-pecuniary motives must be addressed when modeling behavior in economic contexts. Recent models of non-pecuniary motives can be classified as either altruism- based, equity-based, or reciprocity-based. We estimate and compare leading approaches in these categories, using experimental data. We then offer a flexible approach that nests the above three approaches, thereby allowing for nested hypothesis testing and for determining the relative strength of each of the competing theories. In addition, the encompassing approach provides a functional form for utility in different settings without the restrictive nature of the approaches nested within it. Using this flexible form for nested tests, we find that intentional reciprocity, distributive concerns, and altruistic considerations all play a significant role in players' decisions.

Keywords: Altruism; experiment; equity; encompassing; fairness; inequality aversion; reciprocity; Leex (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: A13 C50 C70 C91 D21 J30 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 1999-03
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-cdm, nep-evo and nep-exp
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (6)

Downloads: (external link)
https://econ-papers.upf.edu/papers/368.pdf Whole Paper (application/pdf)

Related works:
Journal Article: Altruism, equity, and reciprocity in a gift-exchange experiment: an encompassing approach (2002)
Working Paper: ALTRUISM, EQUITY, AND RECIPROCITY IN A GIFT-EXCHANGE EXPERIMENT: AN ENCOMPASSING APPROACH (1999)
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:upf:upfgen:368

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in Economics Working Papers from Department of Economics and Business, Universitat Pompeu Fabra
Bibliographic data for series maintained by ( this e-mail address is bad, please contact ).