Coming back from
ESA. New York was great and the conference was fabulous too. There
were several panels on “dishonesty and corruption”. A nice one
with Marco Piovesan looked at people who did not buy bus
tickets on the Italian public transport system.
Outsiders often think
of experimental economics as proving that people are much nicer than
Rational Economic Man – altruistic, unfair, averse to inequality
and so on. In fact, a lot of recent work goes the other way,
exploring spite, dishonesty and hypocrisy. The picture of man that
comes out of this is not a Noble Savage, but more a flawed, selfish
creature whose vices are partially checked by his fear of social
disapproval.
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