Minimally Acceptable Altruism and the Ultimatum Game

Rotemberg, Julio J.

doi:10.2139/ssrn.917196

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Minimally Acceptable Altruism and the Ultimatum Game

FRB of Boston Working Paper No. 06-12

34 Pages Posted: 14 Jul 2006

See all articles by Julio J. Rotemberg

Julio J. Rotemberg

Harvard University, Business, Government and the International Economy Unit (deceased); National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER) (deceased)

Date Written: May 23, 2006

Abstract

I suppose that people react with anger when others show themselves not to be minimally altruistic. With heterogeneous agents, this can account for the experimental results of ultimatum and dictator games. Moreover, it can account for the surprisingly large fraction of individuals who offer an even split, with parameter values that are more plausible than those required to explain outcomes in these experiments with the models of Levine (1998), Fehr and Schmidt (1999), Dickinson (2000), and Bolton and Ockenfels (2000).

JEL Classification: D64, D63, C72, A13

Suggested Citation: Suggested Citation

Rotemberg, Julio J., Minimally Acceptable Altruism and the Ultimatum Game (May 23, 2006). FRB of Boston Working Paper No. 06-12, Available at SSRN: https://ssrn.com/abstract=917196 or http://dx.doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.917196