Dirk Engelmann and Andreas Ortmann’s study: ‘The Robustness Of Laboratory Gift exchange: A Reconsideration’ took a subject pool of students from economics and business courses at the University of Berlin and the Institute For Empirical Research In Economics at the University of Zurich and had participants randomly selected into a employer or employee category. The managers would offer the workers a wage and an effort level that was required and the workers would choose to accept or decline the offer. The acceptance rate for the groups according to effort and wage were measured. The study suggested that there was little evidence for positive reciprocity and that laboratory gift exchange is highly sensitive to the parametrization of the model and the way the model is implemented. Engelmann also found that workers experienced negative reciprocity to negative wages. Engelmann suggested that gift-exchange is highly sensitive to changes in the parameters of the game (parametrization), the framing effect and anonymity. This has important consequence for empirical implementation.
