Experimentelle Forschung in der Budgetierung – Lügen, nichts als Lügen?

Budgeting is one of the most important instruments for planning, control and coordination in decentralized firms. Participative budgeting allows a firm’s headquarters to make use of the divisional managers’ superior information when formulating budgets, but, simultaneously, gives the managers the opportunity to benefit from their superior information and to build slack into their budgets. This paper presents experiments analyzing the behavior in participative budgeting processes and explores the question how the actors’ behavior is influenced by pure self-interest on the one hand and non-standard preferences e.g. for the well-being of others or for honesty on the other hand.