Luck or Cheating? A Field Experiment on Honesty with Children

Alessandro Bucciol and Marco Piovesan

No 08-28, Discussion Papers from University of Copenhagen. Department of Economics

Abstract: We ran an experiment with children to study the development of honesty with age. We asked each child to toss a fair coin in private and to record the outcome (white or black) in a paper sheet. We rewarded only those who reported white. We found a fraction of reported whites signifi cantly larger than 50%, uniformly across age groups. This suggests that some children cheat when cheating is profi table and they are not observed. In a second treatment we told children not to cheat. This reminder reduced the probability of reporting white by 18% on average, and signifi cantly more in girls.

Keywords: honesty; children; fi eld experiment (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: C93 J13 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 10 pages
Date: 2008-11
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-cbe and nep-exp
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (13)

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Journal Article: Luck or cheating? A field experiment on honesty with children (2011)
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:kud:kuiedp:0828

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