EXPERIMENTAL EVIDENCE ON DICTATOR AND ULTIMATUM GAMES FROM TURKISH AND PAKISTANI STUDENTS

EXPERIMENTAL EVIDENCE ON DICTATOR AND ULTIMATUM GAMES FROM TURKISH AND PAKISTANI STUDENTS

We conduct a web-based laboratory experiment in which first-year undergraduate students from a university in Istanbul play dictator and ultimatum games. Firstly, we analyze and try to explore the behavior of Turkish students. Then, we compare our results with the Saleem and Chaudhry (2011) results, which have exactly same experiment design, for the Pakistani students. We find evidence against the payoff maximization (self-regarding) hypothesis. Offers that give responder positive amounts in the dictator game are evidence of some degree of "altruism". Pure self-interest model would predict that player 1 would keep entire amount. On average mean offers by Turkish students are higher than the means offers by the Pakistanis in DG. In UG, mean offers are same in both cases and overall rejection rate are quite higher in Turkish case than in Pakistanis case when comparing 43 % with 31 %. It is evident that Turkish students are more altruistic than Pakistanis while female in both games are more fair than males.

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