Please use this identifier to cite or link to this item: https://hdl.handle.net/10419/147874 
Year of Publication: 
2016
Series/Report no.: 
IZA Discussion Papers No. 10188
Publisher: 
Institute for the Study of Labor (IZA), Bonn
Abstract: 
Private information is at the heart of many economic activities. For decades, economists have assumed that individuals are willing to misreport private information if this maximizes their material payoff. We combine data from 72 experimental studies in economics, psychology and sociology, and show that, in fact, people lie surprisingly little. We then formalize a wide range of potential explanations for the observed behavior, identify testable predictions that can distinguish between the models and conduct new experiments to do so. None of the most popular explanations suggested in the literature can explain the data. We show that only combining a preference for being honest with a preference for being seen as honest can organize the empirical evidence.
Subjects: 
private information
honesty
truth-telling
lying
meta study
JEL: 
D03
D82
H26
I13
J31
Document Type: 
Working Paper

Files in This Item:
File
Size
8.24 MB





Items in EconStor are protected by copyright, with all rights reserved, unless otherwise indicated.