Shades of dishonesty and cheating in informal milk markets in India

  • Intrinsic motivation for honesty is perceived as an important determinant of large and persistent variation in cheating behavior. However, little is known about its actual role due to challenges in obtaining precise measures of motivation for honesty, as well as field outcomes on cheating. We fill these gaps using a unique setting of informal milk markets in India. A novel behavioral experiment, which combines a standard die roll task with Bluetooth technology, is used to measure motivation for honesty of milkmen at both extensive and intensive margins. We then buy milk from the same milkmen and show that cheating in the field, measured by the amount of water added to milk, widens significantly with a milkman’s degree of dishonesty. Additional analyses show that conventional binary measure of motivation for honesty suffers from measurement errors, resulting in underestimation of this association.

Download full text files

Export metadata

Additional Services

Share in Twitter Search Google Scholar
Metadaten
Author:Markus Kröll, Devesh Rustagi
URN:urn:nbn:de:hebis:30:3-400667
URL:http://safe-frankfurt.de/fileadmin/user_upload/editor_common/Research/Working_Paper/SAFE_WP_134_2.pdf
Parent Title (English):SAFE working paper series ; No. 134
Series (Serial Number):SAFE working paper (134)
Publisher:SAFE
Place of publication:Frankfurt am Main
Document Type:Working Paper
Language:English
Year of Completion:2016
Year of first Publication:2016
Publishing Institution:Universitätsbibliothek Johann Christian Senckenberg
Release Date:2016/05/10
Tag:India; cheating; die game milk; informal markets; motivation for honesty
Page Number:55
HeBIS-PPN:381274659
Institutes:Wirtschaftswissenschaften / Wirtschaftswissenschaften
Wissenschaftliche Zentren und koordinierte Programme / House of Finance (HoF)
Wissenschaftliche Zentren und koordinierte Programme / Center for Financial Studies (CFS)
Wissenschaftliche Zentren und koordinierte Programme / Sustainable Architecture for Finance in Europe (SAFE)
Dewey Decimal Classification:3 Sozialwissenschaften / 33 Wirtschaft / 330 Wirtschaft
Sammlungen:Universitätspublikationen
Licence (German):License LogoDeutsches Urheberrecht