IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/rco/dpaper/282.html

Malleability of Preferences for Honesty

Author

Listed:
  • Abeler, Johannes

    (University of Oxford)

  • Falk, Armin

    (briq)

  • Kosse, Fabian

    (LMU Munich)

Abstract

Reporting private information is a key part of economic decision making. A recent literature has found that many people have a preference for honest reporting, contrary to usual economic assumptions. In this paper, we investigate whether preferences for honesty are malleable and what determines them. We experimentally measure preferences for honesty in a sample of children. As our main result, we provide causal evidence on the effect of the social environment by randomly enrolling children in a year-long mentoring programme. We find that, about four years after the end of the programme, mentored children are significantly more honest.

Suggested Citation

  • Abeler, Johannes & Falk, Armin & Kosse, Fabian, 2021. "Malleability of Preferences for Honesty," Rationality and Competition Discussion Paper Series 282, CRC TRR 190 Rationality and Competition.
    • Handle: RePEc:rco:dpaper:282
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://rationality-and-competition.de/wp-content/uploads/discussion_paper/282.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    Other versions of this item:

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Alexandra de Gendre & Jan Feld & Nicolás Salamanca & Ulf Zölitz, 2023. "Same-sex teacher effects," ECON - Working Papers 438, Department of Economics - University of Zurich, revised May 2024.
    2. Shan, Xiaoyue & Zölitz, Ulf, 2022. "Peers Affect Personality Development," CEPR Discussion Papers 17241, C.E.P.R. Discussion Papers.
    3. Paul Schüle, 2023. "Career Preferences and Socio-Economic Background," ifo Working Paper Series 395, ifo Institute - Leibniz Institute for Economic Research at the University of Munich.
    4. James J. Heckman & Bridget Galaty & Haihan Tian, 2023. "The Economic Approach to Personality, Character and Virtue," NBER Working Papers 31258, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    5. Bharti, Nitin Kumar & Roy, Sutanuka, 2023. "The early origins of judicial stringency in bail decisions: Evidence from early childhood exposure to Hindu-Muslim riots in India," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 221(C).

    More about this item

    Keywords

    ;
    ;
    ;
    ;
    ;

    JEL classification:

    • C90 - Mathematical and Quantitative Methods - - Design of Experiments - - - General
    • D90 - Microeconomics - - Micro-Based Behavioral Economics - - - General
    • D64 - Microeconomics - - Welfare Economics - - - Altruism; Philanthropy; Intergenerational Transfers
    • D82 - Microeconomics - - Information, Knowledge, and Uncertainty - - - Asymmetric and Private Information; Mechanism Design
    • H26 - Public Economics - - Taxation, Subsidies, and Revenue - - - Tax Evasion and Avoidance
    • J13 - Labor and Demographic Economics - - Demographic Economics - - - Fertility; Family Planning; Child Care; Children; Youth

    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:rco:dpaper:282. 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: Viviana Lalli (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://rationality-and-competition.de .

    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.