Disguising Lies—Image Concerns and Partial Lying in Cheating Games

Kiryl Khalmetski and Dirk Sliwka

American Economic Journal: Microeconomics, 2019, vol. 11, issue 4, 79-110

Abstract: We study equilibrium reporting behavior in cheating games when agents have a fixed cost of lying and image concerns not to be perceived as a liar. We show that equilibria naturally arise in which agents with low costs of lying randomize among a set of the highest potential reports. Such equilibria induce a distribution of reports in line with observed experimental patterns. We also find that higher image concerns lead to an increase in the range of reported lies, while the effect of the fixed cost of lying is the opposite.

JEL-codes: C72 D82 Z13 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2019
Note: DOI: 10.1257/mic.20170193
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (64)

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.aeaweb.org/doi/10.1257/mic.20170193 (application/pdf)
https://www.aeaweb.org/doi/10.1257/mic.20170193.data (application/zip)
https://www.aeaweb.org/doi/10.1257/mic.20170193.ds (application/zip)
Access to full text is restricted to AEA members and institutional subscribers.

Related works:
Working Paper: Disguising Lies - Image Concerns and Partial Lying in Cheating Games (2017)
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:aea:aejmic:v:11:y:2019:i:4:p:79-110

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
https://www.aeaweb.org/journals/subscriptions

Access Statistics for this article

American Economic Journal: Microeconomics is currently edited by Johannes Hörner

More articles in American Economic Journal: Microeconomics from American Economic Association Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Michael P. Albert ().