Fairness in Ultimatum Games with Asymmetric Information and Asymmetric Payoffs

Abstract

Players bargained over chips with different exchange rates and with different information regarding these exchange rates. Offers generally reflected a self-serving definition of fairness. There is ample evidence that relative income shares entered players utility functions, resulting in predictable variations in both rejection rates and offers. However, offers were significantly more likely to be rejected when first-movers intentionally offered unequal money splits compared to when comparable offers were clearly unintentional. When both players were fully informed and first-movers had higher exchange rates, conflicting fairness norms developed, resulting in unusually high rejection rates.Journal of Economic LiteratureClassification Numbers: C72, C78, C92.