Shifting the Blame: On Delegation and Responsibility

Björn Bartling and Urs Fischbacher

No 380, IEW - Working Papers from Institute for Empirical Research in Economics - University of Zurich

Abstract: To fully understand the motives for delegating a decision right, it is important to study responsibility attributions for outcomes of delegated decisions. We conducted an experiment in which subjects were able to delegate the choice between a fair or unfair allocation, and used a punishment option to elicit responsibility attributions. Our results show that, first, responsibility attribution can be effectively shifted and, second, this constitutes a powerful motive for the delegation of a decision right. Furthermore, we propose a formal measure of responsibility and show that this measure outperforms measures based on outcome or intention in predicting punishment behavior.

Keywords: Delegation; decision rights; moral responsibility; blame shifting (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: C91 D63 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2008-07
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-bec, nep-cbe, nep-cdm and nep-exp
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (12)

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https://www.zora.uzh.ch/id/eprint/52333/1/iewwp380.pdf (application/pdf)

Related works:
Journal Article: Shifting the Blame: On Delegation and Responsibility (2012)
Working Paper: Shifting the Blame: On Delegation and Responsibility (2008)
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:zur:iewwpx:380

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