We examine the role of cognitive ability, personality traits and gender in a one-shot gift exchange experiment. Controlling for cognitive ability and personality characteristics, men offer higher wages than women do, as do agents with greater cognitive ability and those scoring higher on...

The gift-exchange game is a form of sequential prisoner's dilemma, developed by Fehr, Kirchsteiger, and Riedl (1993), and popularized in a series of papers by Ernst Fehr and co-authors. While the European studies typically feature a high degree of gift exchange, the few U.S. studies provide some...