New Experimental Results on the Solidarity Game

University of Siena Economics Working Paper No. 393

38 Pages Posted: 20 Jan 2004

See all articles by Susanne Büchner

Susanne Büchner

Max Planck Society for the Advancement of the Sciences - Max Planck Institute for Economics

Giorgio Coricelli

University of Southern California - Department of Economics

Ben Greiner

Vienna University of Economics and Business

Date Written: August 2003

Abstract

This paper revisits and extends the experiment on the solidarity game by Selten and Ockenfels (1998). We replicate the basic design of the solidarity game and extend it in order to test the robustness of the "fixed total sacrifice" effect and the applied strategy method. Our results only partially confirm the validity of the fixed total sacrifice effect. In a treatment with constant group-endowment rather than constant winner-endowment (Selten and Ockenfels, 1998) the predominance of the fixed total sacrifice behavior is replaced by relative "fixed gift" behavior. We additionally introduce a measure of personality characteristics and compare its specific components with pro-social behavior resulted from our experiments. We don't find any correlations between actual gift behavior and measures of empathy driven pro-social behavior used in social science.

Keywords: experimental economics, game theory, fixed total sacrifice, solidarity

JEL Classification: C91

Suggested Citation

Büchner, Susanne and Coricelli, Giorgio and Greiner, Ben, New Experimental Results on the Solidarity Game (August 2003). University of Siena Economics Working Paper No. 393, Available at SSRN: https://ssrn.com/abstract=467421 or http://dx.doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.467421

Susanne Büchner

Max Planck Society for the Advancement of the Sciences - Max Planck Institute for Economics ( email )

Kahlaische Strasse 10
D-07745 Jena, 07745
Germany

Giorgio Coricelli (Contact Author)

University of Southern California - Department of Economics ( email )

3620 South Vermont Ave. Kaprielian (KAP) Hall, 300
Los Angeles, CA 90089
United States

HOME PAGE: http://dornsife.usc.edu/coricelli/

Ben Greiner

Vienna University of Economics and Business

Welthandelsplatz 1
Vienna, Wien 1020
Austria

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