INCENTIVES FOR DISHONESTY: AN EXPERIMENTAL STUDY WITH INTERNAL AUDITORS

C-Tier
Journal: Economic Inquiry
Year: 2020
Volume: 58
Issue: 2
Pages: 764-779

Authors (4)

Loukas Balafoutas (Leopold-Franzens-Universität I...) Simon Czermak (not in RePEc) Marc Eulerich (not in RePEc) Helena Fornwagner (not in RePEc)

Score contribution per author:

0.251 = (α=2.01 / 4 authors) × 0.5x C-tier

α: calibrated so average coauthorship-adjusted count equals average raw count

Abstract

We conduct an experiment with professional internal auditors and evaluate their performance and objectivity, measured as the extent to which they truthfully report the performance of other participants in a real‐effort task. In line with our hypotheses, we find that incentive‐based compensation increases dishonest behavior: competitive incentives lead to under‐reporting of other participants' performance, while collective incentives lead to over‐reporting of performance. We replicate these results with a student sample. In addition, we find that moving from an environment with objective performance evaluation toward a peer evaluation scheme reduces performance among internal auditors, but not among students.(JEL C93, M42, M52)

Technical Details

RePEc Handle
repec:bla:ecinqu:v:58:y:2020:i:2:p:764-779
Journal Field
General
Author Count
4
Added to Database
2026-01-24