Title

A Cash Effect in Ultimatum Game Experiments

Abstract

This paper reports two experiments involving an ultimatum game, conducted in Japan. There were two treatments in our experiments. One was called a cash session and the other was called a point session. The cash session means introducing cash into the ultimatum game. In other words, in a cash session, subjects bargained money in cash but not points or tokens as most prior experiments did. We found that compared to those in the point sessions, proposers offered more and responders rejected less in the cash sessions. These evidences imply that a cash effect does exist in the ultimatum game experiments.

Keywords

Cash effect, Ultimatum game, Cost-loss discrepancy, Experimental design

JEL Classification

C72, C91

Inquiries

Junyi SHEN
Research Institute for Economics and Business Administration
Kobe University
Rokkodai-cho, Nada-ku, Kobe
657-8501 Japan
Phone: +81-78-803-7036
FAX: +81-78-803-7059

Hiromasa TAKAHASHI
Faculty of International Studies, Hiroshima City University, Japan