Promises, expectations & causation

Giovanni Di Bartolomeo, Martin Dufwenberg, Stefano Papa, Francesco Passarelli

Research output: Contribution to journalArticlepeer-review

22 Scopus citations

Abstract

Why do people keep their promises? Vanberg (2008) and Ederer and Stremitzer (2017) provide causal evidence in favor of, respectively, an intrinsic preference for keeping one's word and Charness and Dufwenberg's (2006) expectations-based account based on guilt aversion. The overall picture is incomplete though, as no study disentangles effects in a design that provides exogenous variation of both (the key features of) promises and beliefs. We report evidence from an experimental design that does so.

Original languageEnglish (US)
Pages (from-to)137-146
Number of pages10
JournalGames and Economic Behavior
Volume113
DOIs
StatePublished - Jan 2019

Keywords

  • Causation
  • Expectations
  • Guilt aversion
  • Moral commitment
  • Promises

ASJC Scopus subject areas

  • Finance
  • Economics and Econometrics

Fingerprint

Dive into the research topics of 'Promises, expectations & causation'. Together they form a unique fingerprint.

Cite this