Individual Preferences for Giving

We utilize graphical representations of Dictator Games which generate rich individual-level data. Our baseline experiment employs budget sets over feasible payoff-pairs. We test these data for consistency with utility maximization, and we recover the underlying preferences ∗The results reported here were previously distributed in three different papers titled “Individual Preferences for Giving,” “Distinguishing Social Preferences from Preferences for Altruism” and “Pareto Damaging Behaviors.” This research was supported by the Experimental Social Science Laboratory (X-Lab) at the University of California, Berkeley. We thank Jim Andreoni and Gary Charness for detailed comments and suggestions. We are grateful to Bruce Ackerman, Ian Ayres, Colin Camerer, Ken Chay, Stefano DellaVigna, Liran Einav, Douglas Gale, Steve Goldman, Alvin Klevorick, Botond Koszegi, John List, Tom Palfrey, Ben Polak, Jim Powell, Matthew Rabin, Al Roth, Ariel Rubinstein, Alan Schwartz, Andrew Schotter, Chris Shannon, Hal Varian, and Bill Zame for helpful discussions. This paper has also benefited from suggestions by the participants of seminars at Caltech, Institute for Advanced Studies, NYU, Yale SOM, UC Berkeley, UC San Diego, and the AEA 2006 annual meeting in Boston. Syngjoo Choi and Benjamin Schneer provided excellent research assistance. In addition, we would like to thank Brenda Naputi and Lawrence Sweet from the X-Lab for their valuable assistance, and Roi Zemmer for writing the experimental computer program. For financial support, Fisman thanks the Columbia University Graduate School of Business; Kariv acknowledges UC Berkeley COR grant; Markovits thanks Yale Law School and Deans Anthony Kronman and Harold Koh. Kariv is grateful to the hospitality of the Institute for Advances Studies School of Social Science. †Graduate School of Business, Columbia University, Uris 823, New York, NY 10027 (E-mail: [email protected], URL: http://www-1.gsb.columbia.edu/faculty/rfisman/). ‡Department of Economics, University of California, Berkeley, 549 Evans Hall # 3880, Berkeley, CA 94720 (E-mail: [email protected], URL: http://socrates.berkeley.edu/~kariv/). §Yale Law School, P.O. Box 208215, New Haven, CT 06520. (E-mail: [email protected], URL: http://www.law.yale.edu/outside/html/faculty/ntuser93/profile.htm)