ON THE FAILURE TO INDUCE MEAGER OFFERS IN ULTIMATUM GAMES

We report on a failure to elicit extreme demands in modified ultimatum games where player 1 is either structurally weaker or stronger than she or he would be in the standard ultimatum game. These games are obtained by extending the ultimatum game to costless two-period games; in one type of game player 1 is given two opportunities to propose, and in the other, the players alternate playing the proposer role. Our results coupled with results reported by other experimenters suggest that ultimatum ourcomes are in inherent contrast with those suggested by standard non-cooperative game theory. We argue that as long as one player can veto any offer by the other, shares tend to be more even than is predicted by the standard game-theoretic model.