How private is private information? The ability to spot deception in an economic game

Michèle Belot and Jeroen van de Ven ()

Edinburgh School of Economics Discussion Paper Series from Edinburgh School of Economics, University of Edinburgh

Abstract: We provide experimental evidence on the ability to detect deceit in a buyer-seller game with asymmetric information. Sellers have private information about the buyer's valuation of a good and sometimes have incentives to mislead buyers. We examine if buyers can spot deception in face-to-face encounters. We vary (1) whether or not the buyer can interrogate the seller, and (2) the contextual richness of the situation. We find that the buyers' prediction accuracy is above chance levels, and that interrogation and contextual richness are important factors determining the accuracy. These results show that there are circumstances in which part of the information asymmetry is eliminated by people's ability to spot deception.

Keywords: deception; lie detection; asymmetric information; face-to-face interaction; experiment (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: C91 D82 K4 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 26
Date: 2013-12
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-cbe, nep-cta and nep-exp
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.econ.ed.ac.uk/papers/id237_esedps.pdf

Related works:
Journal Article: How private is private information? The ability to spot deception in an economic game (2017)
Working Paper: How private is private information? The ability to spot deception in an economic game (2013)
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:edn:esedps:237

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in Edinburgh School of Economics Discussion Paper Series from Edinburgh School of Economics, University of Edinburgh 31 Buccleuch Place, EH8 9JT, Edinburgh. Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Research Office ().