Please use this identifier to cite or link to this item: https://hdl.handle.net/10419/51929 
Year of Publication: 
2011
Series/Report no.: 
IZA Discussion Papers No. 5884
Publisher: 
Institute for the Study of Labor (IZA), Bonn
Abstract: 
This paper presents the results of a laboratory experiment in which workers perform a real-effort task and supervisors report the workers' performance to the experimenter. The report is non verifiable and determines the earnings of both the supervisor and the worker. We find that not all the supervisors, but at least one third of them bias their report. Both selfish black lies (increasing the supervisor's earnings while decreasing the worker's payoff) and Pareto white lies (increasing the earnings of both) according to Erat and Gneezy (2009)'s terminology are frequent. In contrast, spiteful black lies (decreasing the earnings of both) and altruistic white lies (increasing the earnings of workers but decreasing those of the supervisor) are almost non-existent. The supervisors' second-order beliefs and their decision to lie are highly correlated, suggesting that guilt aversion plays a role.
Subjects: 
lies
deception
self-image
guilt aversion
lie-aversion
evaluation
experiments
JEL: 
C91
D82
M52
Persistent Identifier of the first edition: 
Document Type: 
Working Paper

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