A Bargaining Experiment to Motivate Discussion on Fairness

The author presents a classroom version of the popular research game the Ultimatum Game. Researchers are placing growing importance on how affects behavior, and this experiment provides a useful, fun, and engaging in which a day or two of class time can be spent on the topic. The appendix all of the materials necessary to conduct this experiment, and the can highlight several items of interest for the instructor. First, different place different subjective weights on concerns for fairness versus. Second, theories that incorporate concerns for fairness into agents' preferences often explain behavior better than those that do not. Finally, when it relatively cheap to purchase fairness (or equality) individuals purchase more of. The classroom results can motivate discussion of a downward sloping demand for fairness.