Maison des Sciences Humaines
11, Porte des Sciences
L-4366 Esch-sur-Alzette / Belval
LISER Salle de Conference, 1st Floor
3E-seminars@liser.lu
Abstract
This paper studies whether malfunctioning institutions erode good behavior. We use a large-scale online experiment, in which participants play a repeated observed cheating game. When we ask participants to report honestly and promise no control, we find low cheating rates. When control of truthful reporting is introduced, low cheating rates remain. In our main treatment with a malfunctioning institution, participants do not know whether they are in the treatment with or without control. In this treatment, participants who do not face control for some rounds start cheating significantly more often, reaching highest cheating rates. That is, a malfunctioning institution leads to more cheating than no institution at all, which indicates that the development of cheating behavior is endogenous to the institutions. Our findings suggest a novel negative effect of unenforced laws.
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Supported by the Luxembourg National Research Fund (PRIDE19/14233191).
More about the 3E DTU
The Doctoral Training Unit (DTU) 3E - Experiments, Ethics and Economics - consists of an interdisciplinary consortium of 9 social scientists who use scientific experiments involving human subjects in their research. The objective of the consortium is to create a formal link for collaboration across the three existing social science research laboratories in Luxembourg, with the aim to push forward the state-of-the-art of what we know about human behavior in economic interactions. The DTU 3E gathers members across 5 Luxembourgish research units:
(1) Luxembourg Institute of Socio-Economic Research LISER
(2) Institute for Health and Behavior IHB (Faculty of Humanities FLSHASE, University of Luxembourg UL)
(3) Institute of Cognitive Science and Assessment COSA (FLSHASE, UL)
(4) Luxembourg School of Finance LSF (Faculty of Law, Economics and Finance FDEF, UL)
(5) Luxembourg Centre of Logistics LCL (Economics Research Centre CREA, FDEF, UL)
