【主讲】王湘红 (中国人民大学教授)
【主题】The Power of Relative Proportion - An Experiment of Income Allocation
【时间】2018年5月3日 (周四) 14：00-17：30
【地点】上海财经大学经济学院楼701室
【语言】英文
【摘要】This study examines the framing effect of relative proportion versus absolute amount in income allocation in ultimatum game. The hypothesis is that absolute amount and relative proportion can shift reference points of proposers and receivers and thereby affect their decisions and the allocation outcome. We design an ultimatum game experiment conducted on the WeChat platform where two people allocate a given endowment between them. Participants are randomly divided into two treatment groups and three endowment levels. The allocation proposal between a pair is expressed in absolute amount in the control group, and as a proportion of their total endowment in the treatment group. We find an interaction effect between proposing method and endowment size so that the proportion method increases average proposed offer in the high endowment condition, not in the medium and low endowment conditions. We further conduct the second experiment to examine how receivers’ decisions are affected by the expression of allocation proposal. We find that the proportion method lowers the minimum accepted offers of the receivers when the endowment is low, not when the endowment is high, which is consistent with the hypothesis of interaction effect. In general, the proportion method would increase the total chance of agreement, and the share of receivers in large endowments. These findings have important implications for many cases of income distribution.
