Lies and biased evaluation: A real-effort experiment

B-Tier
Journal: Journal of Economic Behavior and Organization
Year: 2012
Volume: 84
Issue: 2
Pages: 537-549

Score contribution per author:

1.005 = (α=2.01 / 2 authors) × 1.0x B-tier

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

Abstract

Employees’ performance evaluation has been generalized in companies but biased reviews and misreporting may impair its quality. In our experiment workers perform a real-effort task and supervisors report the workers’ performance to the experimenter. We find that more than one third of supervisors misreport their worker's performance. Misreporting mainly consists of selfish black lies (that increase the supervisor's earnings at the detriment of the worker) and Pareto white lies (that increase the earnings of both), according to Erat and Gneezy's (2012) terminology. Workers anticipate biased appraisals and misreporting is more frequent when supervisors’ second-order beliefs are elicited.

Technical Details

RePEc Handle
repec:eee:jeborg:v:84:y:2012:i:2:p:537-549
Journal Field
Theory
Author Count
2
Added to Database
2026-01-29