Research Symposium

BIO

I am a freshman from Tampa Florida and my research this past year has been based in the field of economics.

Honesty & Observability

Abstract

We introduced an experimental design that allows us to discreetly observe the true message of a fraction of the decisions in a Fischbacher & Follmi-Heusi (2013) style lying game. This project builds on earlier research that compared lying behavior in a setting where 0% of decisions were observed to a setting where 100% of decisions were observed (Gneezy, et al. 2018; Abeler, et al. 2019). Using a consistent design, we studied lying behavior in settings of 0%, 20%, 50%, and 100% observation, respectively. These new partial observability treatments allow us to directly observe individual lie decisions in an environment where subjects have an incentive to lie through the social image channel. With this individual level data, we can more precisely estimate the individual behavior of the unobserved subjects in a setting where subjects have an incentive to disguise their lies. Using these more precise estimates, we can test previously untested predictions of the lying models that consider a social image cost. In addition to these treatments, we used the design to test the detectable/deniable lie paradigm (Tergiman & Villeval 2023) in an individual decision setting. Data collection is planned to begin in March 2024.

Keywords: Honesty & Observability