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Why Blame?

Mehmet Gurdal, Joshua Miller () and Aldo Rustichini
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Aldo Rustichini: University of Minnesota

CAGE Online Working Paper Series from Competitive Advantage in the Global Economy (CAGE)

Abstract: We provide experimental evidence that subjects blame others based on events they are not responsible for. In our experiment an agent chooses between a lottery and a safe asset; payment from the chosen option goes to a principal who then decides how much to allocate between the agent and a third party. We observe widespread blame: regardless of their choice, agents are blamed by principals for the outcome of the lottery, an event they are not responsible for. We provide an explanation of this apparently irrational behavior with a delegated-expertise principal-agent model, the subjects’ salient perturbation of the environment.

Keywords: Experiments; Rationality; Fairness (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2013
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-cbe and nep-exp
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (8)

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http://www2.warwick.ac.uk/fac/soc/economics/resear ... /158-2013_gurdal.pdf

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Working Paper: Why Blame? (2013) Downloads
Working Paper: Why Blame? (2013) Downloads
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