Do Economists Lie More?

Raúl López-Pérez and Eli Spiegelman

No 2012/04, Working Papers in Economic Theory from Universidad Autónoma de Madrid (Spain), Department of Economic Analysis (Economic Theory and Economic History)

Abstract: Recent experimental evidence suggests that some people dislike telling lies, and tell the truth even at a cost. We use experiments as well to study the socio-demographic covariates of such lie aversion, and find gender and religiosity to be without predictive value. However, subjects’ major is predictive: Business and Economics (B&E) subjects lie significantly more frequently than other majors. This is true even after controlling for subjects’ beliefs about the overall rate of deception, which predict behavior very well: Although B&E subjects expect most others to lie in our decision problem, the effect of major remains. An instrumental variables analysis suggests that the effect is not simply one of selection: It seems that studying B&E has a causal impact on behavior.

Keywords: Communication; honesty; lie aversion; major; norms. (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: C70 C91 D03 D64 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 19 pages
Date: 2012-02
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-cbe, nep-evo, nep-exp and nep-sog
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (15)

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.uam.es/departamentos/economicas/analecon/especifica/mimeo/wp20124.pdf
Our link check indicates that this URL is bad, the error code is: 404 Not Found (http://www.uam.es/departamentos/economicas/analecon/especifica/mimeo/wp20124.pdf [307 Moved Temporarily]--> https://www.uam.es/departamentos/economicas/analecon/especifica/mimeo/wp20124.pdf [301 Moved Permanently]--> https://www.uam.es/Economicas/AnalisisEconomicoTeoriaHistoria/1234888140248.htm/especifica/mimeo/wp20124.pdf)

Related works:
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:uam:wpaper:201204

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in Working Papers in Economic Theory from Universidad Autónoma de Madrid (Spain), Department of Economic Analysis (Economic Theory and Economic History) Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Andrés Maroto-Sánchez ( this e-mail address is bad, please contact ).