If the Worst Comes to the Worst. Dictator Giving When Recipient’s Endowments are Risky

Christoph Engel and Sebastian Goerg

No 2015_15, Discussion Paper Series of the Max Planck Institute for Research on Collective Goods from Max Planck Institute for Research on Collective Goods

Abstract: Donors may often not be sure whether a recipient really deserves their help. Does this uncertainty deter generosity? In an experiment we find that, to the contrary, under most specifications of uncertainty, dictators give more, compared with the donation the same dictator makes to a recipient they know to have the expected value of the endowment with certainty. They are particularly concerned about the possibility that a recipient leaves the lab with no payoff from the game.

Keywords: Dictator Game; Uncertainty; Donation (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: C91 D03 D81 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2015-10
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-cbe, nep-exp and nep-hpe
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Related works:
Journal Article: If the worst comes to the worst: Dictator giving when recipient’s endowments are risky (2018)
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:mpg:wpaper:2015_15

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