Honesty, beliefs about honesty, and economic growth in 15 countries

David Hugh-Jones

Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, 2016, vol. 127, issue C, 99-114

Abstract: The honesty of people in an online panel from 15 countries was measured in two experiments: reporting a coin flip with a reward for “heads”, and an online quiz with the possibility of cheating. There are large differences in honesty across countries. Average honesty is positively correlated with per capita GDP. This is driven mostly by GDP differences arising before 1950, rather than by GDP growth since 1950. A country's average honesty correlates with the proportion of its population that is Protestant. These facts suggest a long-run relationship between honesty and economic development. The experiment also elicited participants’ expectations about different countries’ levels of honesty. Expectations were not correlated with reality. Instead they appear to be driven by cognitive biases, including self-projection.

Keywords: Honesty; Experiment; Lying (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2016
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (38)

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S016726811630052X
Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:eee:jeborg:v:127:y:2016:i:c:p:99-114

DOI: 10.1016/j.jebo.2016.04.012

Access Statistics for this article

Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization is currently edited by Houser, D. and Puzzello, D.

More articles in Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization from Elsevier
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Catherine Liu ().