Naïve Responses to Kind Delegation |
| |
| Authors: | Gerald Eisenkopf Urs Fischbacher |
| |
| Affiliation: | 1. University of Konstanz, Department of Economics, Konstanz, Germany;2. Thurgau Institute of Economics, Kreuzlingen, Switzerland |
| |
| Abstract: | People do not like to delegate the distribution of favors. To explain this reluctance, we disentangle reward motives in an experiment in which an investor can directly transfer money to a trustee or delegate this decision to another investor. Varying the transfer values of the investor and delegate, we find that the trustee's rewards follow a rather simple pattern. In all situations, both investors are rewarded, but the person who ultimately decides gets a higher reward. Unlike studies on the punishment of delegated unkind decisions, our results do not reveal a more sophisticated reward behavior that takes people's responsibility into account. Copyright © 2014 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. |
| |
| Keywords: | |
|
|
