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Income and Intrinsic Honesty around the World

When:
THU, 11 DEC 2025
From:
2:00 PM
To:
3:15 PM
Where:
In person
Luxembourg Institute of Socio-Economic Research (LISER)

11, Porte des Sciences | L-4366 Esch/Alzette

LISER 1st floor, Salle Conference (Jane Jacobs)
With:
Moritz Janas
Moritz Janas (U. Gothenburg)
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Understanding the ethical behavior of economic elites is critical in an era where high-income individuals wield growing influence over legal and political systems. Drawing on incentivized behavioral data from over 65,000 nationally representative respondents across 70 countries, this study examines the relationship between income and intrinsic honesty around the world. Participants take part in the “Mind Game,” which enables them to lie for money without risk of being detected, while allowing researchers to measure dishonesty at the group level. We uncover substantial cross-country variation: in some countries, income positively correlates with greater honesty, whereas in others with greater dishonesty. The variation in relative dishonesty is associated with institutional quality in general, and the relative treatment of high-income individuals by the judicial system in specific. Paradoxically, as institutional quality improves, high-income individuals become more dishonest relative to lower-income individuals. Our findings highlight the role of institutions in shaping elite morality.


Speaker
Moritz Janas
Moritz Janas (U. Gothenburg)
Speaker
I am a tenure-track Assistant Professor in the Department of Economics at the University of Gothenburg (Sweden). Until August 2025, I was employed as a postdoctoral researcher at the Center for Behavioral Institutional Design at New York University Abu Dhabi (UAE).
Ethics, Experiments and Economics (3E) seminar series 2025

The seminars are also sponsored by the Competence Center in Experimental and Participatory Research (EXPAR). The 3E seminar series invites leading scholars to discuss their work on behavioral and experimental researcher.

Event organizer:
https://manumunoz.github.io/expseminars.html

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Strengthening global labour economics research and policy engagement | The Luxembourg Institute of Socio-Economic Research (LISER) is proud to announce that the IZA Network, one of the world’s foremost communities in labour economics, will join LISER as its new institutional home starting January 1, 2026.