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Bad bankers no more? Truth-telling and (dis)honesty in the finance industry

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  • Christoph Huber
  • Jürgen Huber

Abstract

Worries about unethical behavior are a recurring issue in the finance industry, which has inspired a number of recent studies. We contribute to this ongoing discussion by investigating preferences for truthfulness within the finance industry in a controlled experiment with 415 financial professionals (and 270 students as a control group). Participants have to report one of two numbers, of which one is true, the other false, and where truth-telling is costly. In three main treatments we vary the situational context of subjects' decisions (abstract, neutral, finance context) by applying differently framed instructions. We find that contexts matter for financial professionals: they act more honestly in a financial context, while for a control group we find no such differences. Further variations on the financial decision situation do not worsen financial professionals' honesty. As driver of the observed behavior we find reputational concerns to play a major role in financial professionals' decisions.

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  • Christoph Huber & Jürgen Huber, 2020. "Bad bankers no more? Truth-telling and (dis)honesty in the finance industry," Working Papers 2020-03, Faculty of Economics and Statistics, Universität Innsbruck.
    • Handle: RePEc:inn:wpaper:2020-03
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    Cited by:

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    2. Deter, Max & van Hoorn, André, 2023. "Selection, socialization, and risk preferences in the finance industry: Longitudinal evidence for German finance professionals," Journal of Behavioral and Experimental Economics (formerly The Journal of Socio-Economics), Elsevier, vol. 106(C).
    3. Heinicke, Franziska & König-Kersting, Christian & Schmidt, Robert, 2022. "Injunctive vs. descriptive social norms and reference group dependence," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 195(C), pages 199-218.
    4. Christoph Huber & Christian König-Kersting & Matteo M. Marini, 2022. "Experimenting with Financial Professionals," Working Papers 2022-07, Faculty of Economics and Statistics, Universität Innsbruck, revised Jun 2024.
    5. Martin Holmén & Felix Holzmeister & Michael Kirchler & Matthias Stefan & Erik Wengström, 2023. "Economic Preferences and Personality Traits Among Finance Professionals and the General Population," The Economic Journal, Royal Economic Society, vol. 133(656), pages 2949-2977.
    6. Andrej Gill & Matthias Heinz & Heiner Schumacher & Matthias Sutter, 2023. "Social Preferences of Young Professionals and the Financial Industry," Management Science, INFORMS, vol. 69(7), pages 3905-3919, July.
    7. Bhattacharya, Haimanti & Dugar, Subhasish, 2022. "Business norm versus norm-nudge as a contract-enforcing mechanism: Evidence from a real marketplace," European Economic Review, Elsevier, vol. 144(C).
    8. Stoll, Julius, 2022. "The cost of honesty: Field evidence☆," Journal of Behavioral and Experimental Economics (formerly The Journal of Socio-Economics), Elsevier, vol. 101(C).
    9. Limbach, Peter & Rau, P. Raghavendra & Schürmann, Henrik, 2023. "The decline of trust across the U.S. finance industry," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 213(C), pages 324-344.
    10. Ahrens, Steffen & Bosch-Rosa, Ciril, 2023. "Motivated beliefs, social preferences, and limited liability in financial decision-Making," Journal of Banking & Finance, Elsevier, vol. 154(C).
    11. Guerra, Alice & Zhuravleva, Tatyana, 2021. "Do bystanders react to bribery?," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 185(C), pages 442-462.
    12. Mia Hang Pham & Harvey Nguyen & Martin Young & Anh Dao, 2024. "Who Keeps Company with the Wolf will Learn to Howl: Does Local Corruption Culture Affect Financial Adviser Misconduct?," Journal of Business Ethics, Springer, vol. 194(1), pages 185-210, September.
    13. Eriksen, Kristoffer W. & Fest, Sebastian & Kvaløy, Ola & Dijk, Oege, 2022. "Fair advice," Journal of Banking & Finance, Elsevier, vol. 143(C).
    14. Sebastian Bachler & Armando Holzknecht & Jürgen Huber & Michael Kirchler, 2024. "From Individual Choices to the 4-Eyes-Principle: The Big Robber Game revisited among Financial Professionals and Students," Working Papers 2024-04, Faculty of Economics and Statistics, Universität Innsbruck.
    15. Christian König-Kersting, 2021. "On the Robustness of Social Norm Elicitation," Working Papers 2021-02, Faculty of Economics and Statistics, Universität Innsbruck.

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    More about this item

    Keywords

    dishonesty; cheating; financial professionals; framing; context-dependence; experiment;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • A13 - General Economics and Teaching - - General Economics - - - Relation of Economics to Social Values
    • C91 - Mathematical and Quantitative Methods - - Design of Experiments - - - Laboratory, Individual Behavior
    • D90 - Microeconomics - - Micro-Based Behavioral Economics - - - General
    • G41 - Financial Economics - - Behavioral Finance - - - Role and Effects of Psychological, Emotional, Social, and Cognitive Factors on Decision Making in Financial Markets

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