Truth-Telling: A Representative Assessment

Johannes Abeler, Anke Becker () and Armin Falk
Additional contact information
Anke Becker: University of Bonn

No 6919, IZA Discussion Papers from Institute of Labor Economics (IZA)

Abstract: A central assumption of the canonical cheap talk literature is that people misreport their private information if this is to their material benefit. Recent evidence from laboratory experiments with student subjects suggests, however, that while many people do report the payoff-maximizing outcome, some report their private information truthfully or at least do not lie maximally. We measure truth-telling outside the laboratory by calling a representative sample of the German population at home. In our setup, participants have a strong monetary incentive to misreport, misreporting cannot be detected, and reputational concerns are negligible. Yet, we find that aggregate reporting behavior closely follows the expected truthful distribution. Our results underline the importance of lying costs and raise questions regarding the influence of the decision-making environment and the elicitation mode on reporting behavior.

Keywords: private information; cheap talk; honesty; lying costs; representative experiment (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: C93 D01 D82 D83 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 21 pages
Date: 2012-10
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-cbe, nep-cta, nep-evo, nep-exp and nep-gth
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (13)

Published - published in: Journal of Public Economics, 2014, 113, 96-104

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Working Paper: Truth-telling - A Representative Assessment (2012)
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