On the Nature of Fair Behavior

Armin Falk, Ernst Fehr and Urs Fischbacher

No 17, IEW - Working Papers from Institute for Empirical Research in Economics - University of Zurich

Abstract: This paper shows that identical offers in an ultimatum game generate systematically different rejection rates depending on the other offers that are available to the proposer. This result casts doubt on the consequentialist practice in economics to define the utility of an action solely in terms of the consequences of the action irrespective of the set of alternatives. It means, in particular, that negatively reciprocal behavior cannot be fully captured by equity models that are exclusively based on preferences over the distribution of material payoffs. Models that take into account players� fairness intentions and distributional preferences are consistent with our data while models that focus exclusively on intentions or on the distribution of material payoffs are not.

Keywords: Fairness; reciprocity; intentions; experiments; ultimatum game (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: C78 C91 D63 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-exp and nep-gth
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (275)

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Related works:
Journal Article: On the Nature of Fair Behavior (2003)
Working Paper: On the Nature of Fair Behaviour (2001)
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:zur:iewwpx:017

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