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Choosing Bargaining Partners—An Experimental Study on the Impact of Information About Income, Status and Gender

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  14 March 2025

Håkan Holm  and
Peter Engseld
Håkan Holm*
Affiliation:
Department of Economics, Lund University, 22007, Lund, Sweden
Peter Engseld*
Affiliation:
Department of Economics, Lund University, 22007, Lund, Sweden
*
email: hakan.holm@nek.lu.se
email: peter.engseld@nek.lu.se
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Abstract

Ultimatum proposals and dictator donations are studied when proposers can choose the income and sex of the responder. Responder attributes generated strong effects in the selection decisions; subjects preferred to send proposals to low-income responders and female responders were much more popular than males. Hence, signals of income and sex appear to be important in deciding with whom to bargain. We also report from an experiment where both responders and proposers could select co-player based on socioeconomic status and gender. Both female responders and proposers were strongly preferred. A weaker tendency was that high status subjects were favored.

Keywords

ultimatum proposalsdictator donationsincomestatusgender

JEL classification

D63: Equity, Justice, Inequality, and Other Normative Criteria and Measurement C78: Bargaining Theory • Matching Theory C90: General J7: Labor Discrimination
Type
Research Article
Information
Experimental Economics , Volume 8 , Issue 3 , September 2005 , pp. 183 - 216
Copyright
Copyright © 2005 Economic Science Association

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