Motives for Cooperation in the One-Shot Prisoner’s Dilemma

We investigate the motives for cooperation in one-shot Prisoner’s Dilemma (PD). A prior study finds that rates PD games can be ranked empirically by social surplus from cooperation. That employs symmetric payoffs simultaneous games. Hence, setting, it is not possible to discern since three prominent welfare criteria, (efficiency) preferences, Rawlsian maximin and inequity aversion make same predictions. In present paper, we conduct an experiment identify which of these preferences best explains differences effects risk non-cooperation.