Lying for Others: The Impact of Agency on Misreporting

Georgia E. Buckle, Sascha Füllbrunn () and Wolfgang Luhan
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Georgia E. Buckle: University of Portsmouth

No 2020-12, Working Papers in Economics & Finance from University of Portsmouth, Portsmouth Business School, Economics and Finance Subject Group

Abstract: We extend the experimental design by Fischbacher and Föllmi-Heusi (2013) to examine lying behavior on behalf of others, eliminating all possible incentives apart from social preferences. We compare the prevalence of misreporting in situations where the monetary gain either goes to the decision-maker or to an anonymous other participant. Overall we observe lower levels of lying for others compared to for oneself, however, a significant number of participants were willing to lie to increase another participant’s payoff, with no economic incentive to do so. We find no partial lying for others but rather two extremes: either complete honesty or maximal lying.

Keywords: lying aversion; decision making for others; prosocial lying; experiment (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: C91 D63 D82 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 9
Date: 2020-11-08
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-cbe and nep-exp
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Journal Article: Lying for others: The impact of agency on misreporting (2021)
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:pbs:ecofin:2020-12

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