Peer effects, self-selection and dishonesty

Liza Charroin (), Bernard Fortin () and Marie Claire Villeval ()
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Liza Charroin: CES - Centre d'économie de la Sorbonne - UP1 - Université Paris 1 Panthéon-Sorbonne - CNRS - Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique
Bernard Fortin: ULaval - Université Laval [Québec]
Marie Claire Villeval: GATE Lyon Saint-Étienne - Groupe d'Analyse et de Théorie Economique Lyon - Saint-Etienne - ENS de Lyon - École normale supérieure de Lyon - Université de Lyon - UL2 - Université Lumière - Lyon 2 - UJM - Université Jean Monnet - Saint-Étienne - CNRS - Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique, IZA - Forschungsinstitut zur Zukunft der Arbeit - Institute of Labor Economics

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Abstract: If individuals tend to behave like their reference group, is it because of peer effects, selfselection, or both? Using a peer effect model allowing for conformity and link formation, we designed a real-effort laboratory experiment in which individuals could misreport their performance and select their peers. Our results reveal both a preference for conformity and homophilous link formation, but only among individuals cheating in isolation. This suggests that such link formation was not motivated by a taste for similarity but by acquiring self-serving information. Importantly, we reject the presence of a self-selection bias in the peer effect estimates by showing that the size of peer effects is similar when identical peers were randomly assigned and when individuals selected them.

Keywords: Peer effects; Self-selection; Homophily; Dishonesty; Experiment (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2022
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-exp, nep-net and nep-ure
Note: View the original document on HAL open archive server: https://hal.science/hal-03712450v1
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Citations: View citations in EconPapers (7)

Published in Journal of Economic Behavior and Organization, 2022, 200, pp.618-637. ⟨10.1016/j.jebo.2022.06.024⟩

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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:hal:journl:hal-03712450

DOI: 10.1016/j.jebo.2022.06.024

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