Impact of peers and incentives on lying across age and gender: a school-based experiment from india

Author(s):Dr. Vijaya Chebolu-Subramanian, Associate Professor IFMR GSB , Krea University; Torsha Chakravorty, Research Associate Indian School of Business; Rakesh Nigam, Professor, Madras School of Economics (MSE) and Swagata Mukhopadhyay, Madras School of Economics (MSE)

FEBRUARY 2020

We evaluate lying in school children across age groups with different gender compositions in the presence and absence of peers and incentives. We find (i) significant peer and incentive effects on younger children (ii) lesser lying tendencies in an all-girl’s group at a younger age (iii) Effect of incentives independent of gender composition.

Key Words: unethical behavior, lying, incentives, gender differences, peer effects, field experiments