Social Preferences and Strategic Uncertainty: An Experiment on Markets and Contracts

• 成果类型: Article
• 署名作者: Cabrales, Antonio; Miniaci, Raffaele; Piovesan, Marco; Ponti, Giovanni
• 署名单位: Universidad Carlos III de Madrid; University of Brescia; University of Copenhagen; Universitat d'Alacant; Universitat d'Alacant
• 刊物名称: AMERICAN ECONOMIC REVIEW
• ISSN/ISSBN: 0002-8282
• DOI: 10.1257/aer.100.5.2261
• 发表日期: 2010
• 页码: 2261-2278
• 关键词: games; selection; fairness

摘要

This paper reports a three-phase experiment on a stylized labor market. In the first two phases, agents face simple games, which we use to estimate subjects' social and reciprocity concerns. In the last phase, four principals compete by offering agents a contract from a fixed menu. Then, agents choose to work for a principal by selecting one of the available contracts. We find that (i) (heterogeneous) social preferences are significant determinants of choices, (ii) for both principals and agents, strategic uncertainty aversion is a stronger determinant of choices than fairness, and (iii) agents display a marked propensity to work for principals with similar distributional concerns. (JEL D82, D86, J41)