FAIRNESS IN ULTIMATUM GAMES WITH ASYMMETRIC INFORMATION AND ASYMMETRIC PAYOFFS

Players bar gained over chips with different exchange rates and with d ifferent information regarding these exchange rates. Offers generally reflected a self-serving definition of fairness. There is ample eviden ce that relative income shares entered players utility functions, resu lting in predictable variations in both rejection rates and offers. Ho wever, offers were significantly more likely to be rejected when first -movers intentionally offered unequal money splits compared to when co mparable offers were clearly unintentional. When both players were ful ly informed and first-movers had higher exchange rates, conflicting fa irness norms developed, resulting in unusually high rejection rates. ( C) 1996 Academic Press, Inc.