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Disguising Lies—Image Concerns and Partial Lying in Cheating Games

  • Kiryl Khalmetski
  • Dirk Sliwka
American Economic Journal: Microeconomics
vol. 11, no. 4, November 2019
(pp. 79-110)
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Abstract

We study equilibrium reporting behavior in cheating games when agents have a fixed cost of lying and image concerns not to be perceived as a liar. We show that equilibria naturally arise in which agents with low costs of lying randomize among a set of the highest potential reports. Such equilibria induce a distribution of reports in line with observed experimental patterns. We also find that higher image concerns lead to an increase in the range of reported lies, while the effect of the fixed cost of lying is the opposite.

Citation

Khalmetski, Kiryl, and Dirk Sliwka. 2019. "Disguising Lies—Image Concerns and Partial Lying in Cheating Games." American Economic Journal: Microeconomics, 11 (4): 79-110. DOI: 10.1257/mic.20170193

Additional Materials

JEL Classification

  • C72 Noncooperative Games
  • D82 Asymmetric and Private Information; Mechanism Design
  • Z13 Economic Sociology; Economic Anthropology; Language; Social and Economic Stratification
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