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Context-dependent cheating: Experimental evidence from 16 countries
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Context-dependent cheating: Experimental evidence from 16 countries

Author

Listed:
  • Juan Camilo Cardenas
  • David Pascual-Ezama
  • Toke R. Fosgaard
  • Praveen Kujal

Abstract

Policy makers use several international indices that characterize countries according to the quality of their institutions. However, no effort has been made to study how the honesty of citizens varies across countries. This paper explores the honesty among citizens across sixteen countries with 1440 participants. We employ a very simple task where participants face a trade-off between the joy of eating a fine chocolate and the disutility of having a threatened self-concept because of lying. Despite the incentives to cheat, we find that individuals are mostly honest. Further, international indices that are indicative of institutional honesty are completely uncorrelated with citizens' honesty for our sample countries.

Suggested Citation

  • Juan Camilo Cardenas & David Pascual-Ezama & Toke R. Fosgaard & Praveen Kujal, 2015. "Context-dependent cheating: Experimental evidence from 16 countries," Documentos CEDE 12611, Universidad de los Andes, Facultad de Economía, CEDE.
    • Handle: RePEc:col:000089:012611
    as

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    References listed on IDEAS

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    More about this item

    Keywords

    Honesty; corruption; cultural differences;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • D73 - Microeconomics - - Analysis of Collective Decision-Making - - - Bureaucracy; Administrative Processes in Public Organizations; Corruption
    • C93 - Mathematical and Quantitative Methods - - Design of Experiments - - - Field Experiments
    • D01 - Microeconomics - - General - - - Microeconomic Behavior: Underlying Principles

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