Please use this identifier to cite or link to this item: https://hdl.handle.net/10419/161873 
Year of Publication: 
2017
Series/Report no.: 
CESifo Working Paper No. 6434
Publisher: 
Center for Economic Studies and ifo Institute (CESifo), Munich
Abstract: 
We explore the role of cheap excuses in product choice. If a product improves upon one ethically relevant dimension, agents may care less about other, completely independent ethical facets of the product. This ‘static moral self-licensing’ would extend the logic of the well studied moral self-licensing over time. Our data document that static moral self-licensing exists. Furthermore, effects spill over to later, unrelated but ethically relevant contexts. Thus, static moral self-licensing and moral self-licensing over time amplify each other. Outsiders, though incentivized for correct estimates, are completely oblivious to effects of moral self-licensing, both, static and over time.
Subjects: 
moral self-licensing
moral spillovers
cheap excuses
outsider beliefs
moral personality
homo moralis
preference module
JEL: 
D03
D84
Document Type: 
Working Paper
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