If the Worst Comes to the Worst. Dictator Giving When Recipient’s Endowments 
are Risky

Engel, Christoph; Goerg, Sebastian J.

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If the Worst Comes to the Worst. Dictator Giving When Recipient’s Endowments are Risky

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Engel, Christoph
Max Planck Institute for Research on Collective Goods, Max Planck Society;

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Goerg, Sebastian J.
Max Planck Institute for Research on Collective Goods, Max Planck Society;

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http://www.coll.mpg.de/pdf_dat/2015_15online.pdf
(Preprint)

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Engel, C., & Goerg, S. J. (2015). If the Worst Comes to the Worst. Dictator Giving When Recipient’s Endowments are Risky.

Cite as: https://hdl.handle.net/11858/00-001M-0000-0028-FE0A-1

Abstract

Donors may often not be sure whether a recipient really deserves their help. Does this uncertainty deter generosity? In an experiment we find that, to the contrary, under most specifications of uncertainty, dictators give more, compared with the donation the same dictator makes to a recipient they know to have the expected value of the endowment with certainty. They are particularly concerned about the possibility that a recipient leaves the lab with no payoff from the game.