Date and Time: October 18th, 2019, 10:00 - 11:30 am
Room: Old Campus, Dongliuzhai
Abstract
A relationship between lying behavior and social peferences has often been proposed in explaining patterns of lying aversion (ex. Erat and Gneezy, 2011; Houser, Vetter and Winter, 2012; Maggian and Villeval, 2015). We assess subjects’ lying tendencies in the analogous scenarios using a novel multinomial version of a "mind cheating game" (Garbarino, Slonim and Villeval, 2017), which allows different degrees of lying and is independent of social image and reputation concerns. Our study allows us to observe how individual preferences over fairness and efficiency are associated with the willingness to lie for one's self and others. Selfish and spiteful lies are prevalent among those with strong spiteful preferences in the allocation task, while those subjects with efficiency-oriented preferences tell efficient lies on behalf of others. However, lying on behalf of fairness concerns among those with strong preference for fairness is less apparent in the data. The empirical patterns suggest that individuals with strong efficiency preference may be more likely to lie for fairness concerns, while those with strong fairness preferences may be more likely to lie out of self-interest.
About the Speaker
Jie Zheng is Associate Professor in the Department of Economics and Executive Associate Director of the Tsinghua Economic Science and Policy Experimental Laboratory at Tsinghua University. His research areas are Economic Theory, Information Economics, Experimental Economics, Behavioral Economics, Matching Theory, Financial Economics, Industrial Organization, and the Chinese Economy. His research was published in many well known journals, among them Review of International Economics, Journal of Economic Behavior and Organisation and American Economic Review: Papers & Proceedings.