On the Nature of Fair Behavior and its Development with Age

Abstract:     
Economic decisions have been shown to depend on actual outcomes as well as perceived intentions. In this paper, we examine whether and how the relative importance of outcomes or intentions for economic decisions develops with age. We report the results of ultimatum games with children, teens and students. We find that children and teens react systematically to perceived intentions, like students do. However, children and teens reject unequal offers much more often than students, indicating that outcomes are relatively more important than intentions for younger subjects.

Number of Pages in PDF File: 13

Keywords: Fairness, intentions, ultimatum game, children, age

JEL Classification: D63, C78, C91

working papers series