Honesty in Managerial Reporting
通过三个实验发现，管理者常牺牲金钱来保持诚实或部分诚实，且诚实程度受剩余分配比例影响；利用诚实偏好的契约能提高企业利润。
This study reports the results of three experiments that examine how preferences for wealth and honesty affect managerial reporting. We find that subjects often sacrifice wealth to make honest or partially honest reports, and they generally do not lie more as the payoff to lying increases. We also find less honesty under a contract that provides a smaller share of the total surplus to the manager than under one that provides a larger share, suggesting that the extent of honesty may depend on how the surplus is divided between the manager and the firm. The optimal agency contract yields more firm profit than a contract that relies exclusively on honest reporting. However, a modified version of the optimal agency contract, which makes use of subjects' preferences for honest reporting, yields the highest firm profit. These results suggest that firms may be able to design more profitable employment contracts than those identified by conventional economic analysis.