It’s Time to Cheat!

Alessandro Bucciol, Simona Cicognani and Natalia Montinari ()

No 06/2019, Working Papers from University of Verona, Department of Economics

Abstract: We run a lab experiment testing the correlation between time preferences and cheating at the individual level, controlling for individuals' risk attitude. In our experiment cheating only entails a moral cost for the decision maker, while it imposes no externalities on others, and it is not associated to the risk of being detected and sanctioned. Our hypothesis is that cheating is higher among individuals who attribute more importance to the present. Our experiment also allows to record socio-demographic details and information on cognitive abilities of participants. We observe widespread cheating, and statistical evidence that cheating prevails among subjects who display present bias and over-confidence. Cheating also turns out to be negatively correlated with risk aversion and the discount factor, but only for men, while the impact of present bias seems to be stronger for women.

Keywords: Cheating; Time Discounting; Quasi-hyperbolic preferences (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: C91 D81 D91 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2019-06
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-cbe, nep-exp, nep-neu and nep-upt
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Journal Article: It's time to cheat! (2024)
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:ver:wpaper:06/2019

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