Suchergebnisse

This thesis contains three chapters studying questions of behavioural and experimental economics. Chapter 1, titled "Heterogeneity in lies and lying preferences", develops a theoretical framework and an experimental design which I use to identify systematic patterns of lying behaviour in the presence of heterogeneity of lies and decision-makers. I show that accounting for these patterns provides large gains in out-of-sample predictions of lying decisions. Chapter 2, titled "Eliciting preferences for truth-telling in a sample of politicians", studies the connection between politicians' truth-telling preferences and observable variables such as re-election success. The chapter has been published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. Chapter 3, titled "Reasoning about others' reasoning", introduces an experimental design strategy to disentangle cognitive from beliefbased levels of play in a model of iterative reasoning based on observed choices in an experiment. The chapter has been published in the Journal of Economic Theory. ; Aquesta tesi conté tres capítols que estudien qüestions d'economia del comportament i experimental. El capítol 1, titulat "Heterogeneïtat en mentides i preferències per mentir", desenvolupa un marc teòric i un disseny experimental que faig servir per identificar patrons sistemàtics de comportament mentider en presència d'heterogeneïtat de mentides i de decisors. Demostro que tenir en compte aquests patrons proporciona grans guanys en prediccions fora de la mostra. El capítol 2, titulat "Obtenir preferències per dir la veritat en una mostra de polítics", estudia la connexió entre les preferències per dir la veritat dels polítics i variables observables com l'èxit de la reelecció. El capítol s'ha publicat a Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. El capítol 3, titulat "Raonar sobre el raonament dels altres", introdueix una estratègia de disseny experimental per diferenciar en un joc els nivells d'actuació basats en creences dels basats en límits cognitius en un ...

Honesty is one of the most valued traits in politicians. Yet, because lies often remain undiscovered, it is difficult to study if some politicians are more honest than others. This paper examines which individual characteristics are correlated with truth-telling in a controlled setting in a large sample of politicians. We designed and embedded a game that incentivizes lying with a nonmonetary method in a survey answered by 816 Spanish mayors. Mayors were first asked how interested they were in obtaining a detailed report about the survey results, and at the end of the survey, they had to flip a coin to find out whether they would be sent the report. Because the probability of heads is known, we can estimate the proportion of mayors who lied to obtain the report. We find that a large and statistically significant proportion of mayors lied. Mayors that are members of the two major political parties lied significantly more. We further find that women and men were equally likely to lie. Finally, we find a negative relationship between truth-telling and reelection in the next municipal elections, which suggests that dishonesty might help politicians survive in office.