 Is It a Lie if I Don't Know? Self-Serving Dishonesty Under IgnoranceSven A. Simon Working Papers from Max Planck Institute for Tax Law and Public Finance Abstract: Ignorance of facts and laws may provide an excuse for self-serving reporting behavior, even when it comes at the risk of telling the untruth. This paper studies what decision-makers report when they do not know their true entitlement to a financial gain, and why they do so. In a theory-guided experiment, I show that ignorance of one's true entitlement leads to a pronounced increase in self-serving but untruthful reporting behavior. Two factors determine the reporting decision under ignorance: (i) the decision-maker's belief of the true entitlement and (ii) the absence of a commonly accepted social norm. However, the scope of ignorance as an excuse is limited. Most individuals seek information on their true entitlement to the financial gain once they have the opportunity to do so. Complementary survey evidence highlights the prevalence of uninformed reporting decisions in the field and provides additional insights on behavioral motivations. Keywords: lying behavior; dishonesty; ignorance; information avoidance; laboratory experiment (search for similar items in EconPapers) Downloads: (external link) Related works: Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:mpi:wpaper:tax-mpg-rps-2020-12 Access Statistics for this paper More papers in Working Papers from Max Planck Institute for Tax Law and Public Finance Contact information at EDIRC. |
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