主题｜Topic：Whistleblowing and Diffusion of Responsibility. An Experiment
时间｜Time：3月15号（周五）｜March 15th (Friday), 2：00 - 4：30PM
地点｜Venue：文澴楼709会议室｜Meeting Room 709，WENHUAN
主讲｜Speaker
Gergely Horvath 老师任职于西交利物浦大学国际商学院，主要研究社会网络，劳动经济学，实验和行为经济学，基于代理的建模等方向。已在国际知名经济学 Economics Letters，Journal of Economic Behavior and Organization，The B.E. Journal of Theoretical Economics (Contributions) 等学术期刊发表论文多篇。
研究领域｜Research Interests
Social Networks, Labor Economics, Experimental and Behavioral Economics, Agent-Based Modeling
社会网络，劳动经济学，实验行为经济学，基于代理的建模
摘要｜Abstract
In this paper we examine diffusion of responsibility in a whistleblowing experiment. We use a multiplayer asymmetric information ultimatum game where only the proposer and a subset of the responders know the size of a pie that the proposer distributes among information insiders and outsiders. Insiders have a clear monetary incentive to whistleblow in case of a small pie in order to avoid rejection of seemingly unfair offers by outsiders; in case of a large pie only altruistic motives could explain that insiders whistleblow. We vary the number of information insiders, one or two, who can whistleblow. We find that close to 60% of the insiders whistleblow in a treatment when they are pivotal for both, small and large pies. In a treatment where other insiders can also blow the whistle, we observe a significant drop in case only altruistic motives can explain whistleblowing. We show that the effect is due to the extensive margin, i.e. the share of whistleblowers drops to 20%, while patterns of active whistleblowers do not change. In case of low pie sizes, where whistleblowing is in line with selfish motives, we do not observe diffusion of responsibility, in spite of a possible free riding incentive due to a positive cost of whistleblowing.
