[ryanjshaw]

For me the problem is:

* paragraphs 1-5 describe an experiment which makes makes no sense because it appears to ignore purchasing power parity (PPP)

* paragraphs 6-12+ completely ignore the rather obvious PPP objection and go off on a tangent about the lone genius rebelling against authority blah blah blah - a style of writing which makes me increasingly more irritated and skeptical that the author is going to say anything convincing or interesting because he couldn't foresee and address my (and apparently others') immediate objections, which makes me wonder if this was even proofread

I stopped reading at that point because it felt like a waste of my lunch time. Perhaps I'm missing something obvious? I may read further this evening to see if the other 1000s of words have more substance.

[JackFr]

Your criticism is misplaced. PPP is not the issue, its the nonconstant marginal utility of money. If the marginal utility of money were constant, one would expect the results to be identical for a dollar or a million dollars, and billionaires would be expected to behave the same as day laborers. That is ludicrous. Rather than cultural ideas of fairness, the game more likely could serve as a proxy for the participants initial ex ante wealth endowment.

That being said, many of these 'experiments' in behavioral economics are silly, in that they capture so little of a real world environment and introduce substantial effects of their own as to be meaningless in terms of real (model driven, hypothesis building, testable, repeatable) science.