All deceptions are not alike: Bayesian mechanism design with a social norm against lying



: Korpela Ville

Publisher: J C B MOHR

: 2017

: Journal of Institutional and Theoretical Economics

: JOURNAL OF INSTITUTIONAL AND THEORETICAL ECONOMICS-ZEITSCHRIFT FUR DIE GESAMTE STAATSWISSENSCHAFT

: J INST THEOR ECON

: 173

: 2

: 376

: 393

: 18

: 0932-4569

: 1614-0559

DOI: https://doi.org/10.1628/093245616X14689075188007


We say that a society has a weak norm against lying if, all other things being equal, agents try to avoid getting caught lying. We show that if this is the case, and it usually is, then Bayesian monotonicity is no longer a constraint in implementation and all incentive-compatible social-choice functions are Bayesian implementable. In contrast to the previous literature, our result does not rely on any kind of intrinsic lying aversion, on which the experimental evidence ismixed.



Last updated on 2024-26-11 at 22:13