It’s Time to Cheat

Seminario Theory-Experimental

Alessandro Bucciol (joint with S. Cicognani and N. Montinari)

University of Verona

5-Nov-2018

Seminar 3 – 14:30

The decision to cheat involves intertemporal decision making. We run a lab experiment to study the connection between time preferences and cheating at the individual level; our hypothesis is that the willingness to cheat is higher among individuals who attribute more importance to the present. Our experiment, designed to preserve anonymity, also allows us to record socio-demographic details and information on risk attitude and logic ability. We observe widespread cheating, and robust evidence of a negative correlation between cheating and time discounting. Cheating also turns out to be positively correlated with over-confidence.