Pub Date : 2025-10-27DOI: 10.1016/j.euroecorev.2025.105161
Florian Heine , Arno Riedl
Economic and social situations where groups have to compete are ubiquitous. Such group contests create both a coordination problem within and between groups. Introducing leaders may help to mitigate these coordination problems, but little is known about the effect of leadership in group contests. In a group contest experiment, we compare two types of leadership – leading-by-example and transactional leadership – and also investigate the effect of communication between leaders under both leadership styles. We find that the introduction of leaders mostly increases contest investment. Transactional leaders increase followers’ investment through the allocation of a relatively larger share of the prize to followers who have invested more. Communication between leaders decreases contest investments when there is leading-by-example but not when there is transactional leadership. Overall, leaders do not mitigate the over-investment problem in group contests.
{"title":"Let’s (not) escalate this! Leadership and communication in a group contest","authors":"Florian Heine , Arno Riedl","doi":"10.1016/j.euroecorev.2025.105161","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.euroecorev.2025.105161","url":null,"abstract":"<div><div>Economic and social situations where groups have to compete are ubiquitous. Such group contests create both a coordination problem within and between groups. Introducing leaders may help to mitigate these coordination problems, but little is known about the effect of leadership in group contests. In a group contest experiment, we compare two types of leadership – leading-by-example and transactional leadership – and also investigate the effect of communication between leaders under both leadership styles. We find that the introduction of leaders mostly increases contest investment. Transactional leaders increase followers’ investment through the allocation of a relatively larger share of the prize to followers who have invested more. Communication between leaders decreases contest investments when there is leading-by-example but not when there is transactional leadership. Overall, leaders do not mitigate the over-investment problem in group contests.</div></div>","PeriodicalId":48389,"journal":{"name":"European Economic Review","volume":"181 ","pages":"Article 105161"},"PeriodicalIF":2.4,"publicationDate":"2025-10-27","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"145419634","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"经济学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2025-10-25DOI: 10.1016/j.euroecorev.2025.105190
Arianna Gatta
Using a field experiment on Italy’s Youth Guarantee subsidised internships, this work investigates whether employers discriminate against candidates who participated in Active Labour Market policies at the beginning of their career. Specifically, 4,066 fictitious resumes were sent to real employers in 11 Italian cities. Each resume randomly displayed participation in the Youth Guarantee internship, a regular internship, or an unemployment gap after university graduation, followed by additional work experience. The results revealed that employers discriminate against former Youth Guarantee interns compared with those who are unemployed or regular interns. Discrimination is strongest when the resume does not show sectoral IT skills, suggesting that employers perceive the program to be detrimental to human capital accumulation and use it as a cue to statistically discriminate.
{"title":"Do employers discriminate against Active Labour Market Policies participants? A field experiment on the Youth Guarantee internship in Italy","authors":"Arianna Gatta","doi":"10.1016/j.euroecorev.2025.105190","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.euroecorev.2025.105190","url":null,"abstract":"<div><div>Using a field experiment on Italy’s Youth Guarantee subsidised internships, this work investigates whether employers discriminate against candidates who participated in Active Labour Market policies at the beginning of their career. Specifically, 4,066 fictitious resumes were sent to real employers in 11 Italian cities. Each resume randomly displayed participation in the Youth Guarantee internship, a regular internship, or an unemployment gap after university graduation, followed by additional work experience. The results revealed that employers discriminate against former Youth Guarantee interns compared with those who are unemployed or regular interns. Discrimination is strongest when the resume does not show sectoral IT skills, suggesting that employers perceive the program to be detrimental to human capital accumulation and use it as a cue to statistically discriminate.</div></div>","PeriodicalId":48389,"journal":{"name":"European Economic Review","volume":"184 ","pages":"Article 105190"},"PeriodicalIF":2.4,"publicationDate":"2025-10-25","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"145927377","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"经济学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2025-10-24DOI: 10.1016/j.euroecorev.2025.105188
Joël J. van der Weele , Cristina Figueroa-Sisniega
Previous literature has shown that people are often reluctant to learn whether individually profitable actions have negative consequences for others. In an experimental allocation decision, we vary the ‘inconvenience’ of becoming informed about the payoffs of another player by changing the costs and benefits of choosing the fair outcome. Making the fair allocation cheaper to implement turns out to have a multiplier effect, raising both altruistic choices of informed subjects and the fraction of subjects that chooses to become informed. Thus, in situations of uncertainty, subsidizing altruistic choices to decision makers could be an effective tool for raising social welfare. By contrast, variations in the size of recipients’ potential payoffs have a smaller effect on ignorance and fair choices.
{"title":"Inconvenient truths: A note on information avoidance and the price of fairness","authors":"Joël J. van der Weele , Cristina Figueroa-Sisniega","doi":"10.1016/j.euroecorev.2025.105188","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.euroecorev.2025.105188","url":null,"abstract":"<div><div>Previous literature has shown that people are often reluctant to learn whether individually profitable actions have negative consequences for others. In an experimental allocation decision, we vary the ‘inconvenience’ of becoming informed about the payoffs of another player by changing the costs and benefits of choosing the fair outcome. Making the fair allocation cheaper to implement turns out to have a multiplier effect, raising both altruistic choices of informed subjects and the fraction of subjects that chooses to become informed. Thus, in situations of uncertainty, subsidizing altruistic choices to decision makers could be an effective tool for raising social welfare. By contrast, variations in the size of recipients’ potential payoffs have a smaller effect on ignorance and fair choices.</div></div>","PeriodicalId":48389,"journal":{"name":"European Economic Review","volume":"181 ","pages":"Article 105188"},"PeriodicalIF":2.4,"publicationDate":"2025-10-24","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"145419635","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"经济学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2025-10-24DOI: 10.1016/j.euroecorev.2025.105159
Frauke von Bieberstein , Eberhard Feess , Natalie Packham
People who can increase their payoff by violating a moral norm may delegate decisions to dilute their perception of responsibility, which can lead to a higher overall frequency of moral transgressions. To structure the different effects at work, we first develop a model with multiple delegation stages where decision makers have private information on their lying costs and dilution of responsibility. Our model shows that the impact of delegation is generally ambiguous, but also identifies intuitive sufficient conditions for more moral transgressions with delegation. We then perform a large-scale online experiment where subjects in groups of three can increase their payoff by lying about the outcome of a lottery. We find no evidence that delegation increases the overall lying frequency. Estimating the subjects’ preferences from the data, we find a normal distribution for lying costs and a strongly negatively skewed distribution for a rather low dilution effect.
{"title":"Multi-step delegation and the frequency of immoral decisions: Theory and experiment","authors":"Frauke von Bieberstein , Eberhard Feess , Natalie Packham","doi":"10.1016/j.euroecorev.2025.105159","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.euroecorev.2025.105159","url":null,"abstract":"<div><div>People who can increase their payoff by violating a moral norm may delegate decisions to dilute their perception of responsibility, which can lead to a higher overall frequency of moral transgressions. To structure the different effects at work, we first develop a model with multiple delegation stages where decision makers have private information on their lying costs and dilution of responsibility. Our model shows that the impact of delegation is generally ambiguous, but also identifies intuitive sufficient conditions for more moral transgressions with delegation. We then perform a large-scale online experiment where subjects in groups of three can increase their payoff by lying about the outcome of a lottery. We find no evidence that delegation increases the overall lying frequency. Estimating the subjects’ preferences from the data, we find a normal distribution for lying costs and a strongly negatively skewed distribution for a rather low dilution effect.</div></div>","PeriodicalId":48389,"journal":{"name":"European Economic Review","volume":"181 ","pages":"Article 105159"},"PeriodicalIF":2.4,"publicationDate":"2025-10-24","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"145419637","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"经济学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2025-10-24DOI: 10.1016/j.euroecorev.2025.105181
Min Fang , Mengling Li , Yohanes E. Riyanto
The global organ shortage poses significant welfare challenges. This study examines policy interventions to incentivize deceased organ donor registration and enhance welfare, focusing on donor-priority incentives and information provision. Our laboratory experiment reveals that granting allocation priority to registered donors boosts donor registration but reduces welfare due to adverse selection. Delaying the timing of donor-priority benefits improves welfare by enhancing donation quality but reduces the registration rate. Augmenting donor-priority rule with information provision proves more effective, simultaneously increasing donor registration and welfare. These findings highlight the potential of combining donor-priority incentives with information provision to alleviate organ shortages while promoting efficiency and social welfare.
{"title":"Boosting donation and welfare: Augmenting donor-priority rule with information provision","authors":"Min Fang , Mengling Li , Yohanes E. Riyanto","doi":"10.1016/j.euroecorev.2025.105181","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.euroecorev.2025.105181","url":null,"abstract":"<div><div>The global organ shortage poses significant welfare challenges. This study examines policy interventions to incentivize deceased organ donor registration and enhance welfare, focusing on donor-priority incentives and information provision. Our laboratory experiment reveals that granting allocation priority to registered donors boosts donor registration but reduces welfare due to adverse selection. Delaying the timing of donor-priority benefits improves welfare by enhancing donation quality but reduces the registration rate. Augmenting donor-priority rule with information provision proves more effective, simultaneously increasing donor registration and welfare. These findings highlight the potential of combining donor-priority incentives with information provision to alleviate organ shortages while promoting efficiency and social welfare.</div></div>","PeriodicalId":48389,"journal":{"name":"European Economic Review","volume":"181 ","pages":"Article 105181"},"PeriodicalIF":2.4,"publicationDate":"2025-10-24","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"145475376","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"经济学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2025-10-21DOI: 10.1016/j.euroecorev.2025.105187
Carlos J. Charotti , Nuno Palma , João Pereira dos Santos
Spain was one of the world’s richest countries around 1500. Two centuries later it was a backwater. We rely on a synthetic control methodology to study the long-run impact of the influx of silver from the New World since 1500 for the economic development of Spain. Compared with a synthetic counterfactual, the price level increased by up to 200% by the mid-seventeenth century. Spain’s GDP per capita outperformed other European nations for around a century, but by 1750, GDP per capita was around 40% lower than it would have been if Spain had not been the first-stage receiver of the American treasure.
{"title":"American treasure and the decline of Spain","authors":"Carlos J. Charotti , Nuno Palma , João Pereira dos Santos","doi":"10.1016/j.euroecorev.2025.105187","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.euroecorev.2025.105187","url":null,"abstract":"<div><div>Spain was one of the world’s richest countries around 1500. Two centuries later it was a backwater. We rely on a synthetic control methodology to study the long-run impact of the influx of silver from the New World since 1500 for the economic development of Spain. Compared with a synthetic counterfactual, the price level increased by up to 200% by the mid-seventeenth century. Spain’s GDP per capita outperformed other European nations for around a century, but by 1750, GDP per capita was around 40% lower than it would have been if Spain had not been the first-stage receiver of the American treasure.</div></div>","PeriodicalId":48389,"journal":{"name":"European Economic Review","volume":"180 ","pages":"Article 105187"},"PeriodicalIF":2.4,"publicationDate":"2025-10-21","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"145364197","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"经济学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2025-10-21DOI: 10.1016/j.euroecorev.2025.105187
Carlos J. Charotti , Nuno Palma , João Pereira dos Santos
Spain was one of the world’s richest countries around 1500. Two centuries later it was a backwater. We rely on a synthetic control methodology to study the long-run impact of the influx of silver from the New World since 1500 for the economic development of Spain. Compared with a synthetic counterfactual, the price level increased by up to 200% by the mid-seventeenth century. Spain’s GDP per capita outperformed other European nations for around a century, but by 1750, GDP per capita was around 40% lower than it would have been if Spain had not been the first-stage receiver of the American treasure.
{"title":"American treasure and the decline of Spain","authors":"Carlos J. Charotti , Nuno Palma , João Pereira dos Santos","doi":"10.1016/j.euroecorev.2025.105187","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.euroecorev.2025.105187","url":null,"abstract":"<div><div>Spain was one of the world’s richest countries around 1500. Two centuries later it was a backwater. We rely on a synthetic control methodology to study the long-run impact of the influx of silver from the New World since 1500 for the economic development of Spain. Compared with a synthetic counterfactual, the price level increased by up to 200% by the mid-seventeenth century. Spain’s GDP per capita outperformed other European nations for around a century, but by 1750, GDP per capita was around 40% lower than it would have been if Spain had not been the first-stage receiver of the American treasure.</div></div>","PeriodicalId":48389,"journal":{"name":"European Economic Review","volume":"180 ","pages":"Article 105187"},"PeriodicalIF":2.4,"publicationDate":"2025-10-21","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"145364192","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"经济学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2025-10-18DOI: 10.1016/j.euroecorev.2025.105186
Teppo Felin , Madison Singell
Recombination has long been seen as a central mechanism for explaining technological evolution and economic growth. Yet this view suggests several puzzles. First, the set of potential combinations is astronomically large, raising the question of how humans somehow arrive at useful combinations (amongst indefinite possibilities). And second, just as possible combinations are “unprestatable” in advance, the same goes for the elements or components that might serve as building blocks of combination. The central question, then, is how actors generate salience for useful combinations as well as plausible combinatorial components. We argue that theory-driven experimentation generates combinatorial salience by providing a shortcut for brute force search—making the combinatorial explosion analytically tractable. We link our argument to existing approaches to combination and technology, in particular, Koppl et al.’s Explaining Technology. We augment long-run, evolutionary explanations of combinatorial technology with a more decision-oriented approach. In all, we argue that human theorizing—the forward-looking use of science and causal reasoning—functions as a generative metatechnology that guides experimentation and enables the discovery of useful combinations.
{"title":"Technology: Theory-driven experimentation and combinatorial salience","authors":"Teppo Felin , Madison Singell","doi":"10.1016/j.euroecorev.2025.105186","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.euroecorev.2025.105186","url":null,"abstract":"<div><div>Recombination has long been seen as a central mechanism for explaining technological evolution and economic growth. Yet this view suggests several puzzles. First, the set of potential combinations is astronomically large, raising the question of how humans somehow arrive at useful combinations (amongst indefinite possibilities). And second, just as possible combinations are “unprestatable” in advance, the same goes for the elements or components that might serve as building blocks of combination. The central question, then, is how actors generate salience for useful combinations as well as plausible combinatorial components. We argue that <em>theory-driven experimentation</em> generates combinatorial salience by providing a shortcut for brute force search—making the combinatorial explosion analytically tractable. We link our argument to existing approaches to combination and technology, in particular, Koppl et al.’s <em>Explaining Technology.</em> We augment long-run, evolutionary explanations of combinatorial technology with a more decision-oriented approach. In all, we argue that human theorizing—the forward-looking use of science and causal reasoning—functions as a generative metatechnology that guides experimentation and enables the discovery of useful combinations.</div></div>","PeriodicalId":48389,"journal":{"name":"European Economic Review","volume":"181 ","pages":"Article 105186"},"PeriodicalIF":2.4,"publicationDate":"2025-10-18","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"145419636","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"经济学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2025-10-18DOI: 10.1016/j.euroecorev.2025.105189
Behnud Mir Djawadi, Sabrina Plaß, Sabrina Loer
Social norms shape economic decision-making, yet individuals often systematically misperceive what others think and do, potentially leading to suboptimal social outcomes. While existing research has demonstrated the prevalence and consequences of norm misperceptions across various domains, the literature has remained surprisingly silent on norm-enforcing behaviours. Despite their important role in providing collective benefits, these behaviours are regularly avoided because they may be viewed ambivalently by peers and create personal costs and interpersonal conflict for the actor. Using whistleblowing as an example of a broader category of regulatory behaviour, we examine whether i) norm misperceptions inhibit enforcement actions in the form of whistleblowing, and ii) norm-based interventions can effectively induce a behavioural change in this challenging domain. Through survey data and an incentivised laboratory experiment, we demonstrate that while a majority of individuals (77.55 %) privately support whistleblowing, almost half (45.92 %) misperceive the majority's view. This misperception has significant behavioural consequences: even when individuals personally support whistleblowing, their likelihood of reporting decreases by more than 30 % when normative expectations are perceived to favour silence rather than reporting. A social information intervention revealing the distribution of peer support shows only modest effectiveness. While it marginally increases whistleblowing among those already personally favouring reporting, it does not affect those who personally oppose whistleblowing. Our findings demonstrate the boundaries of norm interventions in enforcement contexts and suggest that, specifically for whistleblowing, corrections of norm misperceptions should not be viewed as substitutes for conventional approaches, such as financial incentives or whistleblower protection, in promoting whistleblowing.
{"title":"“I don’t believe that you believe what I believe”: an experiment on misperceptions of social norms and whistleblowing","authors":"Behnud Mir Djawadi, Sabrina Plaß, Sabrina Loer","doi":"10.1016/j.euroecorev.2025.105189","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.euroecorev.2025.105189","url":null,"abstract":"<div><div>Social norms shape economic decision-making, yet individuals often systematically misperceive what others think and do, potentially leading to suboptimal social outcomes. While existing research has demonstrated the prevalence and consequences of norm misperceptions across various domains, the literature has remained surprisingly silent on norm-enforcing behaviours. Despite their important role in providing collective benefits, these behaviours are regularly avoided because they may be viewed ambivalently by peers and create personal costs and interpersonal conflict for the actor. Using whistleblowing as an example of a broader category of regulatory behaviour, we examine whether i) norm misperceptions inhibit enforcement actions in the form of whistleblowing, and ii) norm-based interventions can effectively induce a behavioural change in this challenging domain. Through survey data and an incentivised laboratory experiment, we demonstrate that while a majority of individuals (77.55 %) privately support whistleblowing, almost half (45.92 %) misperceive the majority's view. This misperception has significant behavioural consequences: even when individuals personally support whistleblowing, their likelihood of reporting decreases by more than 30 % when normative expectations are perceived to favour silence rather than reporting. A social information intervention revealing the distribution of peer support shows only modest effectiveness. While it marginally increases whistleblowing among those already personally favouring reporting, it does not affect those who personally oppose whistleblowing. Our findings demonstrate the boundaries of norm interventions in enforcement contexts and suggest that, specifically for whistleblowing, corrections of norm misperceptions should not be viewed as substitutes for conventional approaches, such as financial incentives or whistleblower protection, in promoting whistleblowing.</div></div>","PeriodicalId":48389,"journal":{"name":"European Economic Review","volume":"180 ","pages":"Article 105189"},"PeriodicalIF":2.4,"publicationDate":"2025-10-18","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"145364196","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"经济学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2025-10-18DOI: 10.1016/j.euroecorev.2025.105189
Behnud Mir Djawadi, Sabrina Plaß, Sabrina Loer
Social norms shape economic decision-making, yet individuals often systematically misperceive what others think and do, potentially leading to suboptimal social outcomes. While existing research has demonstrated the prevalence and consequences of norm misperceptions across various domains, the literature has remained surprisingly silent on norm-enforcing behaviours. Despite their important role in providing collective benefits, these behaviours are regularly avoided because they may be viewed ambivalently by peers and create personal costs and interpersonal conflict for the actor. Using whistleblowing as an example of a broader category of regulatory behaviour, we examine whether i) norm misperceptions inhibit enforcement actions in the form of whistleblowing, and ii) norm-based interventions can effectively induce a behavioural change in this challenging domain. Through survey data and an incentivised laboratory experiment, we demonstrate that while a majority of individuals (77.55 %) privately support whistleblowing, almost half (45.92 %) misperceive the majority's view. This misperception has significant behavioural consequences: even when individuals personally support whistleblowing, their likelihood of reporting decreases by more than 30 % when normative expectations are perceived to favour silence rather than reporting. A social information intervention revealing the distribution of peer support shows only modest effectiveness. While it marginally increases whistleblowing among those already personally favouring reporting, it does not affect those who personally oppose whistleblowing. Our findings demonstrate the boundaries of norm interventions in enforcement contexts and suggest that, specifically for whistleblowing, corrections of norm misperceptions should not be viewed as substitutes for conventional approaches, such as financial incentives or whistleblower protection, in promoting whistleblowing.
{"title":"“I don’t believe that you believe what I believe”: an experiment on misperceptions of social norms and whistleblowing","authors":"Behnud Mir Djawadi, Sabrina Plaß, Sabrina Loer","doi":"10.1016/j.euroecorev.2025.105189","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.euroecorev.2025.105189","url":null,"abstract":"<div><div>Social norms shape economic decision-making, yet individuals often systematically misperceive what others think and do, potentially leading to suboptimal social outcomes. While existing research has demonstrated the prevalence and consequences of norm misperceptions across various domains, the literature has remained surprisingly silent on norm-enforcing behaviours. Despite their important role in providing collective benefits, these behaviours are regularly avoided because they may be viewed ambivalently by peers and create personal costs and interpersonal conflict for the actor. Using whistleblowing as an example of a broader category of regulatory behaviour, we examine whether i) norm misperceptions inhibit enforcement actions in the form of whistleblowing, and ii) norm-based interventions can effectively induce a behavioural change in this challenging domain. Through survey data and an incentivised laboratory experiment, we demonstrate that while a majority of individuals (77.55 %) privately support whistleblowing, almost half (45.92 %) misperceive the majority's view. This misperception has significant behavioural consequences: even when individuals personally support whistleblowing, their likelihood of reporting decreases by more than 30 % when normative expectations are perceived to favour silence rather than reporting. A social information intervention revealing the distribution of peer support shows only modest effectiveness. While it marginally increases whistleblowing among those already personally favouring reporting, it does not affect those who personally oppose whistleblowing. Our findings demonstrate the boundaries of norm interventions in enforcement contexts and suggest that, specifically for whistleblowing, corrections of norm misperceptions should not be viewed as substitutes for conventional approaches, such as financial incentives or whistleblower protection, in promoting whistleblowing.</div></div>","PeriodicalId":48389,"journal":{"name":"European Economic Review","volume":"180 ","pages":"Article 105189"},"PeriodicalIF":2.4,"publicationDate":"2025-10-18","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"145364195","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"经济学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
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