IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/chu/wpaper/22-03.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Agency, Benevolence and Justice

Author

Listed:
  • Prithvijit Mukherjee

    (Mount Holyoke College)

  • J. Dustin Tracy

    (Economic Science Institute, Chapman University)

Abstract

We test for social norms regarding how Agents should select between risky prospects for Principals, including norms consistent with observations by Adam Smith. We elicit norms from subjects serving as ``impartial spectator[s]" about the choice of risky prospects selected by the Agents. We find strong evidence for the existence of norms, consistent with Smith's observations. Furthermore, we find that Agents are more likely to select more normative options. In contrast, we find that Principals' allocation for bonuses depends on the realization of the risky prospect rather than whether the Agents' choice was consistent with the norm.

Suggested Citation

  • Prithvijit Mukherjee & J. Dustin Tracy, 2022. "Agency, Benevolence and Justice," Working Papers 22-03, Chapman University, Economic Science Institute.
    • Handle: RePEc:chu:wpaper:22-03
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://digitalcommons.chapman.edu/esi_working_papers/362/
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    More about this item

    Keywords

    Social norms; Decisions-making for others; Laboratory experiments; Principal-Agent; Decisionmaking under risk;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • C9 - Mathematical and Quantitative Methods - - Design of Experiments
    • D63 - Microeconomics - - Welfare Economics - - - Equity, Justice, Inequality, and Other Normative Criteria and Measurement
    • D81 - Microeconomics - - Information, Knowledge, and Uncertainty - - - Criteria for Decision-Making under Risk and Uncertainty
    • D90 - Microeconomics - - Micro-Based Behavioral Economics - - - General
    • G41 - Financial Economics - - Behavioral Finance - - - Role and Effects of Psychological, Emotional, Social, and Cognitive Factors on Decision Making in Financial Markets

    NEP fields

    This paper has been announced in the following NEP Reports:

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:chu:wpaper:22-03. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Megan Luetje (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/esichus.html .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.