Reputation and Reciprocity: Consequences for the Labour Relation

By Simon Gächter, Armin Falk. Social Science Research Network, 2002

405 citations recorded by the source corpus.

Recent evidence highlights the importance of social norms in many economic relations. Many of these relationships are long-term and provide repeated game incentives for performance. We experimentally investigate interaction effects of reciprocity and repeated game incentives in two treatments (one-shot and repeated) of a gift-exchange game. In both treatments we observe reciprocity, which is strengthened in the repeated game. A detailed analysis shows that in the repeated game some subjects imitate reciprocity. Thus, reciprocity and repeated game incentives reinforce each other. Observed behaviour is robust against experience. We conclude that a long-term interaction is a ‘reciprocity-compatible’ contract enforcement device.

Subfields: Demography, Information Systems and Management, Safety Research

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/41bdf1a62bda3872a42f889636e17065175a5c15

How researchers see this paper

The researchers whose trusted networks rank it highest, strongest advocate first. Every researcher gets a different order.

In Demography

In Information Systems and Management

In Safety Research

Citations in the corpus

Measuring Indirect Reciprocity: Whose Back Do We Scratch? (2009, background): “They play a two-stage gift-exchange game (e.g. Fehr et al. 1993, Gachter and Falk, 2002), where all subjects have the same endowment of 20 tokens.”
Indirect Reciprocity in Cyclical Networks - An Experimental Study - (2005, background): “…that reciprocal behavior is a widespread phenomenon even among anonymous subjects who interact only once (Roth et al., 1991; Fehr et al., 1998a; Gächter & Falk, 2002; on this issue, see also Fehr & Gächter, 1998). this implies that the larger the group, the smaller the players' investment.”
Strong reciprocity, human cooperation, and the enforcement of social norms (2002, neutral): “…several other studies indicating that subjects are heterogeneous with regard to their propensity to exhibit strong reciprocity (Bolle 1998; Fehr and Falk 1999; McCabe, Rassenti and Smith 1998; Charness 2000; McCabe, Rigdon and Smith 2000; Abbink, Irlenbusch and Renner 2000; Gächter and Falk 2001).”
Vive la Différence: Social Banks and Reciprocity in the Credit Market (2013, neutral): “This is especially the case when the contract is incomplete and the agent’s commitment is unobservable (Fehr et al. 1997; Gächter and Falk 2002; Brown et al. 2009).”
Effort and Comparison Income: Experimental and Survey Evidence (2010, background): “This allows us to rule out any reputation-building behavior (Gächter and Falk 2002).”
Fairness, Reciprocity, and Wage Rigidity (2004, neutral): “A series of laboratory experiments demonstrate the importance of reciprocity in mock employment relationships (Fehr, Kirchsteiger, and Riedl (1993, 1998); Kirchler, Fehr, and Evans (1996); Fehr, Kirchler, Weichbold, and Gächter (1998); and Gächter and Falk (2002)).”
Explaining altruistic behavior in humans (2003, background): “Indeed, human subjects cooperate much more if they expect frequent future interactions than if future interactions are rare (Gächter & Falk, 2002; Keser & van Winden, 2000).”
Charitable Giving as a Signal of Trustworthiness: Disentangling the Signaling Benefits of Altruistic Acts (2013, background): “Nevertheless, we find our account more plausible because there is ample evidence from lab experiments that subjects are very capable of distinguishing one-shot from repeated games and act accordingly when playing them (Keser & vanWinden, 2000; Gächter & Falk, 2002).”
Cooperation in primates and humans : mechanisms and evolution (2006, background): “Experiments on the sequential PD where the two players could also choose intermediate cooperation levels confirm the importance of conditional cooperation (e.g. Fehr et al. 1993, Fehr et al. 1997, Falk et al. 1999, Gächter & Falk 2002; see Fehr & Gächter 2000a for an overview).”
Homo Reciprocans: Survey Evidence on Behavioural Outcomes (2008, background): “The latter finding is particularly relevant because many social scientists agree that happiness is an important goal of human life and perhaps best summarises success and achievement in a general way ( Frey and Stutzer, 2002 ).”