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From Individual Choices to the 4-Eyes-Principle: The Big Robber Game revisited among Financial Professionals and Students

Author

Listed:
  • Sebastian Bachler
  • Armando Holzknecht
  • Jürgen Huber
  • Michael Kirchler
Abstract
While headline news frequently report cases of large-scale fraud, corruption, and other immoral behavior, laboratory experiments often show prosocial behavior in strategic games. To reconcile and explain these seemingly conflicting observations, Alós-Ferrer et al. (2022) introduced the Big Robber Game — an altered dictator game where one robber can take money from multiple victims. They reported low prosocial behavior among a pool of student subjects who behaved more prosocial in bilateral games than in the Big Robber Game. In our study,we employ the Big Robber Game within a 2x2 factorial design, engaging over 860 participants to examine the behaviors of financial professionals versus students. Moreover, inspired by the four-eyes principle, a common practice in the finance industry, we investigate decision-making both individually and in pairs. We find overall support for the results of Alós-Ferrer et al. (2022) and that finance professionals rob less than students. Accounting for a multitude of specifications, socio-demographic characteristics and individual preferences, we report that treatment differences disappear, indicating similar behavior across individuals, pairs, finance professionals, and students. Finally, in a series of non-pre-registered exploratory analyses, we show that victims expect finance professionals to rob significantly more than student robbers, implying that finance professionals are considered to be less pro-social than students’ peers.

Suggested Citation

  • 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.
    • Handle: RePEc:inn:wpaper:2024-04
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    References listed on IDEAS

    as
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    More about this item

    Keywords

    Selfishness; Social Preferences; Finance Professionals; Group decisions; Experimental Finance;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • C91 - Mathematical and Quantitative Methods - - Design of Experiments - - - Laboratory, Individual Behavior
    • C93 - Mathematical and Quantitative Methods - - Design of Experiments - - - Field Experiments
    • D91 - Microeconomics - - Micro-Based Behavioral Economics - - - Role and Effects of Psychological, Emotional, Social, and Cognitive Factors on Decision Making

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