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Contracting under Reciprocal Altruism

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  • Shchetinin, Oleg

Abstract

I develop a model of reciprocal altruism which accounts for some evidence in contracting situations, which are paradoxical from the point of view of neoclassical contract theory with selfish actors. My model predicts the crowding-out effect, observed in the Trust Game with the possibility of a fine; for the Control Game the model predicts that an equilibrium can exhibit ”no effect of control”, ”hidden cost of control”, or ”positive effect of control”, depending on the characteristics of the actors, as observed in the experiments. This suggests that reciprocal altruism modeling could be fruitful more generally in applications of contract theory.

Suggested Citation

  • Shchetinin, Oleg, 2009. "Contracting under Reciprocal Altruism," TSE Working Papers 09-078, Toulouse School of Economics (TSE).
  • Handle: RePEc:tse:wpaper:22188
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    Cited by:

    1. Danilov, Anastasia & Sliwka, Dirk, 2013. "Can Contracts Signal Social Norms? Experimental Evidence," IZA Discussion Papers 7477, Institute of Labor Economics (IZA).
    2. Bassi, Matteo & Pagnozzi, Marco & Piccolo, Salvatore, 2014. "Optimal contracting with altruism and reciprocity," Research in Economics, Elsevier, vol. 68(1), pages 27-38.
    3. Shchetinin, Oleg, 2012. "Motivated Agents with Career Concerns: Signalling skills and organizational involvement," Working Papers in Economics 524, University of Gothenburg, Department of Economics.

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    More about this item

    Keywords

    contract theory; signaling; behavioral economics;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • D82 - Microeconomics - - Information, Knowledge, and Uncertainty - - - Asymmetric and Private Information; Mechanism Design
    • M54 - Business Administration and Business Economics; Marketing; Accounting; Personnel Economics - - Personnel Economics - - - Labor Management

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