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How Robust is Laboratory Gift Exchange?

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  14 March 2025

Gary Charness
Affiliation:
Department of Economics, UCSB, Santa Barbara, CA 93106-9210, USA
Guillaume R. Frechette
Affiliation:
Harvard Business School, Boston MA 02163, USA
John H. Kagel*
Affiliation:
Department of Economics, The Ohio State University, Columbus, OH 43210, USA
*

Abstract

The gift-exchange game is a form of sequential prisoner's dilemma, developed by Fehr et al. (1993), and popularized in a series of papers by Ernst Fehr and co-authors. While the European studies typically feature a high degree of gift exchange, the few U.S. studies provide some conflicting results. We find that the degree of gift exchange is surprisingly sensitive to an apparently innocuous change—whether or not a comprehensive payoff table is provided in the instructions. We also find significant and substantial time trends in responder behavior.

Type
Research Article
Copyright
Copyright © 2004 Economic Science Association

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Footnotes

*

This research was conducted while Charness was visiting The Ohio State University.

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