Working Paper: NBER ID: w25746
Authors: Jason A. Aimone; Brittany Ward; James E. West
Abstract: Economic agents face many different types of economic incentives when making financial and moral decisions. We provide experimental data from a population that uniquely responds to incentives to lie compared to previously studied populations. We conduct a standard 6-sided die rolling lying study within a population that believes that God has knowledge of all their actions. Within this population, we find that those who attend church frequently appear to refrain from lying while those that do not frequently attend church do lie, but do not disguise their lies like more secular populations. We further explain how our data fits into the theoretical work on lying.
Keywords: No keywords provided
JEL Codes: C91; D91; Z12
Edges that are evidenced by causal inference methods are in orange, and the rest are in light blue.
| Cause | Effect |
|---|---|
| frequent church attendance (Z12) | lower die rolls (C69) |
| infrequent church attendance (Z12) | higher die rolls (C69) |
| belief in divine observation (Z12) | honesty (Z13) |
| church attendance frequency (Z12) | lying behavior (D91) |