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Horizontal Social Comparisons and Vertical Reciprocity in a Principal–Multi‐Agent Experiment

The aim of this note is to investigate whether the incentive mechanism based on reciprocity is still effective in the presence of several agents by exploring a principal–multi-agent relationship in a gift-exchange experiment. The results show that horizontal social comparisons between agents can undermine the vertical reciprocity-driven incentive mechanism. When long-term relationships or merit procedures are introduced in the experiment, reciprocity becomes effective again.