EconPapers    
Economics at your fingertips  
 

The Dirt on Coming Clean: Perverse Effects of Disclosing Conflicts of Interest

Daylian M. Cain, George Loewenstein and Don A. Moore

The Journal of Legal Studies, 2005, vol. 34, issue 1, 1-25

Abstract: Conflicts of interest can lead experts to give biased and corrupt advice. Although disclosure is often proposed as a potential solution to these problems, we show that it can have perverse effects. First, people generally do not discount advice from biased advisors as much as they should, even when advisors’ conflicts of interest are disclosed. Second, disclosure can increase the bias in advice because it leads advisors to feel morally licensed and strategically encouraged to exaggerate their advice even further. As a result, disclosure may fail to solve the problems created by conflicts of interest and may sometimes even make matters worse.

Date: 2005
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (151)

Downloads: (external link)
http://dx.doi.org/10.1086/426699 (text/html)
Access to the online full text or PDF requires a subscription.

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:ucp:jlstud:v:34:y:2005:p:1-25

DOI: 10.1086/426699

Access Statistics for this article

More articles in The Journal of Legal Studies from University of Chicago Press
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Journals Division (pubtech@press.uchicago.edu).

 
Page updated 2024-12-29
Handle: RePEc:ucp:jlstud:v:34:y:2005:p:1-25