IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/eee/eecrev/v181y2026ics0014292125002090.html

Multi-step delegation and the frequency of immoral decisions: Theory and experiment

Author

Listed:
  • von Bieberstein, Frauke
  • Feess, Eberhard
  • Packham, Natalie

Abstract

People who can increase their payoff by violating a moral norm may delegate decisions to dilute their perception of responsibility, which can lead to a higher overall frequency of moral transgressions. To structure the different effects at work, we first develop a model with multiple delegation stages where decision makers have private information on their lying costs and dilution of responsibility. Our model shows that the impact of delegation is generally ambiguous, but also identifies intuitive sufficient conditions for more moral transgressions with delegation. We then perform a large-scale online experiment where subjects in groups of three can increase their payoff by lying about the outcome of a lottery. We find no evidence that delegation increases the overall lying frequency. Estimating the subjects’ preferences from the data, we find a normal distribution for lying costs and a strongly negatively skewed distribution for a rather low dilution effect.

Suggested Citation

  • von Bieberstein, Frauke & Feess, Eberhard & Packham, Natalie, 2026. "Multi-step delegation and the frequency of immoral decisions: Theory and experiment," European Economic Review, Elsevier, vol. 181(C).
    • Handle: RePEc:eee:eecrev:v:181:y:2026:i:c:s0014292125002090
    DOI: 10.1016/j.euroecorev.2025.105159
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0014292125002090
    Download Restriction: Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1016/j.euroecorev.2025.105159?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to

    for a different version of it.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    ;
    ;
    ;
    ;
    ;

    JEL classification:

    • C92 - Mathematical and Quantitative Methods - - Design of Experiments - - - Laboratory, Group Behavior
    • D02 - Microeconomics - - General - - - Institutions: Design, Formation, Operations, and Impact
    • D63 - Microeconomics - - Welfare Economics - - - Equity, Justice, Inequality, and Other Normative Criteria and Measurement
    • D71 - Microeconomics - - Analysis of Collective Decision-Making - - - Social Choice; Clubs; Committees; Associations

    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:eee:eecrev:v:181:y:2026:i:c:s0014292125002090. 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: Catherine Liu (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.elsevier.com/locate/eer .

    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.