"Status Quo Effects in Fairness Games: Reciprocal Responses to Acts of Commission vs. Acts of Omission," with James Cox, Georgia State University, Friday, March 1, 3:40 PM-5 PM, 368A Heady Hall.

James C. Cox is Noah Langdale Jr. Chair in Economics, Georgia Research Alliance Eminent Scholar, and Director of the Experimental Economics Center at Georgia State University. He was president of the Economic Science Association (1997-99) and president of the Southern Economic Association (2010-11). His research has been supported by many grants from the National Science Foundation, National Institutes of Health and other organizations. Professor Cox has published research in many areas of theoretical and applied economics including, most especially, experimental economics. His current work includes research on: (a) trust, reciprocity and altruism; (b) public goods and common pool resources; (c) decisions under risk; and (d) decision- making in healthcare.

Abstract: Both the law and culture make a central distinction between acts of commission that overturn the status quo and acts of omission that uphold it. In everyday life acts of commission often elicit stronger reciprocal responses than do acts of omission. In this paper we compare reciprocal responses to both types of acts and ask whether behavior of subjects in two experiments is consistent with existing theory. The design of the experiments focuses on the axioms of revealed altruism theory (Cox, Friedman, and Sadiraj, 2008) that make it observationally distinct from other theories. We find support for this theory in both experiments.