Title: The Road to Hell: An Experimental Study of Intentions
Abstract:Do people care about intentions - even when good intentions do not produce good results? In our experiments we find that rates of punishment and reward react strongly to intentions (the wage a firm de...Do people care about intentions - even when good intentions do not produce good results? In our experiments we find that rates of punishment and reward react strongly to intentions (the wage a firm decides to pay) and more modestly to distributional outcomes (the higher or lower wage actually received including the stochastic component). For example, workers who end up receiving 'medium' wages respond much more positively when this resulted from the firm offering a high wage (but bad luck lowered the worker's pay) than when this resulted from the firm offering a low wage (and good luck raised the pay).Read More