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ROLE‐REVERSAL CONSISTENCY: AN EXPERIMENTAL STUDY OF THE GOLDEN RULE
Author(s) -
CostaGomes Miguel A.,
Ju Yuan,
Li Jiawen
Publication year - 2019
Publication title -
economic inquiry
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.823
H-Index - 72
eISSN - 1465-7295
pISSN - 0095-2583
DOI - 10.1111/ecin.12708
Subject(s) - consistency (knowledge bases) , earnings , economics , property (philosophy) , microeconomics , econometrics , mathematics , finance , philosophy , geometry , epistemology
We report an experiment that asks whether people in a strategic situation behave according to the Golden Rule, that is, do not treat others in ways that they find disagreeable to themselves, a property that we call role‐reversal consistency. Overall, we find that over three quarters of the subjects are role‐reversal consistent. Regression analysis suggests that this finding is not driven by players maximizing their subjective expected monetary earnings given their stated beliefs about their opponents' behavior. We find that subjects' stated beliefs and actions reveal mild projection bias. ( JEL C78, C91)