Do Economists Lie More?
Abstract
Recent experimental evidence suggests that some people dislike telling lies, and tell the truth even at a cost. We use experiments as well to study the socio-demographic covariates of such lie aversion, and find gender and religiosity to be without predictive value. However, subjects’ major is predictive: Business and Economics (B&E) subjects lie significantly more frequently than other majors. This is true even after controlling for subjects’ beliefs about the overall rate of deception, which predict behavior very well: Although B&E subjects expect most others to lie in our decision problem, the effect of major remains. An instrumental variables analysis suggests that the effect is not simply one of selection: It seems that studying B&E has a causal impact on behavior.Download Info
If you experience problems downloading a file, check if you have the proper application to view it first. In case of further problems read the IDEAS help page. Note that these files are not on the IDEAS site. Please be patient as the files may be large.Bibliographic Info
Paper provided by Universidad Autónoma de Madrid (Spain), Department of Economic Analysis (Economic Theory and Economic History) in its series Working Papers in Economic Theory with number 2012/04.Length: 19 pages
Date of creation: Feb 2012
Date of revision:
Handle: RePEc:uam:wpaper:201204
Contact details of provider:
Postal: Francisco Tomás y Valiente, 5, 28049 Madrid
Phone: +34.91.497.42.92
Fax: +34.91.497.69.30
Email:
Web page: http://www.uam.es/departamentos/economicas/analecon/default.html
More information through EDIRC
Related research
Keywords: Communication; honesty; lie aversion; major; norms.;Find related papers by JEL classification:
- C70 - Mathematical and Quantitative Methods - - Game Theory and Bargaining Theory - - - General
- C91 - Mathematical and Quantitative Methods - - Design of Experiments - - - Laboratory, Individual Behavior
- D03 - Microeconomics - - General - - - Behavioral Economics; Underlying Principles
- D64 - Microeconomics - - Welfare Economics - - - Altruism; Philanthropy
This paper has been announced in the following NEP Reports:
- NEP-ALL-2012-02-20 (All new papers)
- NEP-CBE-2012-02-20 (Cognitive & Behavioural Economics)
- NEP-EVO-2012-02-20 (Evolutionary Economics)
- NEP-EXP-2012-02-20 (Experimental Economics)
- NEP-SOG-2012-02-20 (Sociology of Economics)
References
References listed on IDEASPlease report citation or reference errors to , or , if you are the registered author of the cited work, log in to your RePEc Author Service profile, click on "citations" and make appropriate adjustments.:
- Dreber, Anna & Johannesson, Magnus, 2008. "Gender differences in deception," Economics Letters, Elsevier, vol. 99(1), pages 197-199, April.
- Holm, Håkan J. & Kawagoe, Toshiji, 2008.
"Face-to-Face Lying – an experimental study in Sweden and Japan,"
Working Papers
2008:5, Lund University, Department of Economics.
- Holm, Håkan J. & Kawagoe, Toshiji, 2010. "Face-to-face lying - An experimental study in Sweden and Japan," Journal of Economic Psychology, Elsevier, vol. 31(3), pages 310-321, June.
- Anthony M. Yezer & Robert S. Goldfarb & Paul J. Poppen, 1996. "Does Studying Economics Discourage Cooperation? Watch What We Do, Not What We Say or How We Play," Journal of Economic Perspectives, American Economic Association, vol. 10(1), pages 177-186, Winter.
- Tore Ellingsen & Magnus Johannesson, 2004. "Promises, Threats and Fairness," Economic Journal, Royal Economic Society, vol. 114(495), pages 397-420, 04.
- Lundquist, Tobias & Ellingsen, Tore & Gribbe, Erik & Johannesson, Magnus, 2009. "The aversion to lying," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 70(1-2), pages 81-92, May.
- Ole Olesen & N. Petersen, 2003. "Introduction," Journal of Productivity Analysis, Springer, vol. 20(3), pages 237-241, November.
Citations
Blog mentions
As found by EconAcademics.org, the blog aggregator for Economics research:- Economists lie more
by Economic Logician in Economic Logic on 2012-02-29 14:54:00 - Assorted Links
by Xiaoyu Lu in Penny's innocent ideas on 2012-03-01 11:36:00 - Would I lie to you?
by Inaki Villanueva in Applied economist on 2012-04-01 11:27:00
Cited by:
- Reuben, Ernesto & Stephenson, Matt, 2012. "Nobody Likes a Rat: On the Willingness and Consequences of Reporting Lies," IZA Discussion Papers 6998, Institute for the Study of Labor (IZA).
Lists
This item is featured on the following reading lists or Wikipedia pages:Statistics
Access and download statisticsCorrections
When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:uam:wpaper:201204For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: (Raúl López-Pérez).
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.
If references are entirely missing, you can add them using this form.
If the full references list an item that is present in RePEc, but the system did not link to it, you can help with 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 profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.
Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.