A cash effect in ultimatum game experiments

Abstract

This paper reports two experiments involving an ultimatum game, conducted in Japan. There were two treatments in each experiment, which we call the cash session and the point session. The cash session involves introducing cash into the procedure of the experiments. In other words, in a cash session, subjects made decisions while holding cash in their hands, versus having points or tokens as in most prior experiments. We found that, compared to the point sessions, proposers offered more and responders rejected less frequently in the cash sessions. This is evidence that a cash effect exists in ultimatum game experiments.