The Effect of Leadership on Free-Riding: Results from a Public-Good Experiment

Daniel M. Parsons, Nick Feltovich and Philip Grossman

Review of Behavioral Economics, 2020, vol. 7, issue 1, 31-63

Abstract: We examine the impact of two types of communication: (i) encouragement of honesty and (ii) encouragement of lying that benefits the group. Subjects choose contributions to a public good, with a portion of the contribution framed as determined by a self-reported die roll. While honesty is typically viewed as desirable, in our setting it is more equivocal, since it results in a sub-optimal group payoff. We find that when leaders encourage their followers to lie in a cooperative way, followers increase these “die roll†contributions. There is also a positive spillover into additional discretionary contributions to the public good. By contrast, the way leaders are chosen and their observed contribution history have little effect.

Keywords: Leader; Cheap talk; Lying; Honesty; Group culture (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: C72 C92 D23 D91 H41 M14 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2020
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Citations: View citations in EconPapers (1)

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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:now:jnlrbe:105.00000117

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