IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/ads/wpaper/0061.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Distinguishing Social Preferences from Preferences for Altruism

Author

Listed:
  • Raymond Fisman

    (Graduate School of Business, Columbia University)

  • Shachar Kariv

    (Department of Economics, University of California, Berkeley)

  • Daniel Markovits

    (Yale Law School)

Abstract

We report a laboratory experiment that enables us to distinguish preferences for altruism (concerning tradeoffs between own payoffs and the payoffs of others) from social preferences (concerning tradeoffs between the payoffs of others). By using graphical representations of three-person Dictator Games that vary the relative prices of giving, we generate a very rich data set well-suited to studying behavior at the level of the individual subject. We attempt to recover subjects’ underlying preferences by estimating a constant elasticity of substitution (CES) model that represents altruistic and social preferences. We find that both social preferences and preferences for altruism are highly heterogeneous, ranging from utilitarian to Rawlsian. In spite of this heterogeneity across subjects, there exists a strong positive withinsubject correlation between the efficiency-equity tradeoffs made in altruistic and social preferences.

Suggested Citation

  • Raymond Fisman & Shachar Kariv & Daniel Markovits, 2005. "Distinguishing Social Preferences from Preferences for Altruism," Economics Working Papers 0061, Institute for Advanced Study, School of Social Science.
    • Handle: RePEc:ads:wpaper:0061
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.sss.ias.edu/publications/papers/econpaper61.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    Other versions of this item:

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Gary Charness & Matthew Rabin, 2002. "Understanding Social Preferences with Simple Tests," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 117(3), pages 817-869.
    2. Varian, Hal R, 1982. "The Nonparametric Approach to Demand Analysis," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 50(4), pages 945-973, July.
    3. Fisman, Raymond & Kariv, Shachar & Markovitz, Daniel, 2005. "Distinguishing Social Preferences from Preferences for Altruism," Department of Economics, Working Paper Series qt9q26c4fr, Department of Economics, Institute for Business and Economic Research, UC Berkeley.
    4. Hal R. Varian, 1983. "Non-parametric Tests of Consumer Behaviour," The Review of Economic Studies, Review of Economic Studies Ltd, vol. 50(1), pages 99-110.
    5. Ernst Fehr & Klaus M. Schmidt, 1999. "A Theory of Fairness, Competition, and Cooperation," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 114(3), pages 817-868.
    6. Raymond Fisman & Shachar Kariv & Daniel Markovits, 2007. "Individual Preferences for Giving," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 97(5), pages 1858-1876, December.
    7. David K. Levine, 1998. "Modeling Altruism and Spitefulness in Experiment," Review of Economic Dynamics, Elsevier for the Society for Economic Dynamics, vol. 1(3), pages 593-622, July.
    8. Afriat, Sidney N, 1972. "Efficiency Estimation of Production Function," International Economic Review, Department of Economics, University of Pennsylvania and Osaka University Institute of Social and Economic Research Association, vol. 13(3), pages 568-598, October.
    9. Gary E Bolton & Axel Ockenfels, 1997. "A Theory of Equity, Reciprocity, and Competition," Levine's Working Paper Archive 1889, David K. Levine.
    10. Andreoni,J. & Harbaugh,W.T., 2005. "Power indices for revealed preference tests," Working papers 10, Wisconsin Madison - Social Systems.
    11. Bolton, Gary E, 1991. "A Comparative Model of Bargaining: Theory and Evidence," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 81(5), pages 1096-1136, December.
    12. Gary E. Bolton & Axel Ockenfels, 1998. "Strategy and Equity: An ERC Analysis of the Guth-van Damme Game," Levine's Working Paper Archive 2060, David K. Levine.
    13. Axel Ockenfels & Gary E. Bolton, 2000. "ERC: A Theory of Equity, Reciprocity, and Competition," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 90(1), pages 166-193, March.
    14. Rabin, Matthew, 1993. "Incorporating Fairness into Game Theory and Economics," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 83(5), pages 1281-1302, December.
    15. Edi Karni & Zvi Safra, 2002. "Individual Sense of Justice: A Utility Representation," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 70(1), pages 263-284, January.
    16. James Andreoni & John Miller, 2002. "Giving According to GARP: An Experimental Test of the Consistency of Preferences for Altruism," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 70(2), pages 737-753, March.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Pablo Brañas-Garza & Miguel A. Durán & Maria Paz Espinosa, 2009. "The Role of Personal Involvement and Responsibility in Unfair Outcomes," Rationality and Society, , vol. 21(2), pages 225-248, May.
    2. Fisman, Raymond & Kariv, Shachar & Markovitz, Daniel, 2005. "Distinguishing Social Preferences from Preferences for Altruism," Department of Economics, Working Paper Series qt9q26c4fr, Department of Economics, Institute for Business and Economic Research, UC Berkeley.
    3. Jan Heufer & Per Hjertstrand, 2015. "Homothetic Efficiency and Test Power: A Non-Parametric Approach," Tinbergen Institute Discussion Papers 15-064/I, Tinbergen Institute.
    4. Syngjoo Choi & Raymond Fisman & Douglas Gale & Shachar Kariv, 2007. "Substantive and Procedural Rationality in Decisions under Uncertainty," Levine's Bibliography 122247000000000946, UCLA Department of Economics.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Fisman, Raymond & Jakiela, Pamela & Kariv, Shachar, 2017. "Distributional preferences and political behavior," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 155(C), pages 1-10.
    2. Dominik Erharter, 2012. "Credence goods markets, distributional preferences and the role of institutions," Working Papers 2012-11, Faculty of Economics and Statistics, Universität Innsbruck.
    3. Kerschbamer, Rudolf, 2015. "The geometry of distributional preferences and a non-parametric identification approach: The Equality Equivalence Test," European Economic Review, Elsevier, vol. 76(C), pages 85-103.
    4. Adrian Bruhin & Ernst Fehr & Daniel Schunk, 2019. "The many Faces of Human Sociality: Uncovering the Distribution and Stability of Social Preferences," Journal of the European Economic Association, European Economic Association, vol. 17(4), pages 1025-1069.
    5. Korenok, Oleg & Millner, Edward L. & Razzolini, Laura, 2013. "Impure altruism in dictators' giving," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 97(C), pages 1-8.
    6. Cox, James C. & Friedman, Daniel & Gjerstad, Steven, 2007. "A tractable model of reciprocity and fairness," Games and Economic Behavior, Elsevier, vol. 59(1), pages 17-45, April.
    7. Güth, Werner & Kocher, Martin G., 2014. "More than thirty years of ultimatum bargaining experiments: Motives, variations, and a survey of the recent literature," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 108(C), pages 396-409.
    8. Nicklisch, Andreas & Wolff, Irenaeus, 2012. "On the nature of reciprocity: Evidence from the ultimatum reciprocity measure," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 84(3), pages 892-905.
    9. Erik O. Kimbrough & Alexander Vostroknutov, 2016. "Norms Make Preferences Social," Journal of the European Economic Association, European Economic Association, vol. 14(3), pages 608-638, June.
    10. James Andreoni & Marco Castillo & Ragan Petrie, 2009. "Revealing Preferences for Fairness in Ultimatum Bargaining," Korean Economic Review, Korean Economic Association, vol. 25, pages 35-63.
    11. Klaus M. Schmidt, 2011. "Social Preferences and Competition," Journal of Money, Credit and Banking, Blackwell Publishing, vol. 43, pages 207-231, August.
    12. Kurt A. Ackermann & Ryan O. Murphy, 2019. "Explaining Cooperative Behavior in Public Goods Games: How Preferences and Beliefs Affect Contribution Levels," Games, MDPI, vol. 10(1), pages 1-34, March.
    13. Raymond Fisman & Shachar Kariv & Daniel Markovits, 2007. "Individual Preferences for Giving," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 97(5), pages 1858-1876, December.
    14. Croson, Rachel & Konow, James, 2009. "Social preferences and moral biases," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 69(3), pages 201-212, March.
    15. Blanco, Mariana & Engelmann, Dirk & Normann, Hans Theo, 2011. "A within-subject analysis of other-regarding preferences," Games and Economic Behavior, Elsevier, vol. 72(2), pages 321-338, June.
    16. Đula, Ivan & Größler, Andreas, 2021. "Inequity aversion in dynamically complex supply chains," European Journal of Operational Research, Elsevier, vol. 291(1), pages 309-322.
    17. Jim Engle-Warnick & Natalia Mishagina, 2014. "Insensitivity to Prices in a Dictator Game," CIRANO Working Papers 2014s-19, CIRANO.
    18. Kovarik, Jaromir, 2009. "Social Preferences - Literature Survey," IKERLANAK 6416, Universidad del País Vasco - Departamento de Fundamentos del Análisis Económico I.
    19. Holzmeister, F. & Kerschbamer, R., 2019. "oTree: The Equality Equivalence Test," Journal of Behavioral and Experimental Finance, Elsevier, vol. 22(C), pages 214-222.
    20. Rudolf Kerschbamer, 2013. "The Geometry of Distributional Preferences and a Non-Parametric Identification Approach," Working Papers 2013-25, Faculty of Economics and Statistics, Universität Innsbruck.

    More about this item

    JEL classification:

    • C79 - Mathematical and Quantitative Methods - - Game Theory and Bargaining Theory - - - Other
    • C91 - Mathematical and Quantitative Methods - - Design of Experiments - - - Laboratory, Individual Behavior
    • D64 - Microeconomics - - Welfare Economics - - - Altruism; Philanthropy; Intergenerational Transfers

    NEP fields

    This paper has been announced in the following NEP Reports:

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:ads:wpaper:0061. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Nancy Cotterman (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/ssiasus.html .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.