Delegated risk-taking, accountability, and outcome bias
通过实验研究人们如何评价代其做风险决策的人，发现评价存在结果偏差，且当评价影响决策者报酬时，更强的结果偏差会导致风险选择与客户偏好更不一致。
Abstract In a sequence of experiments, this study investigates how people evaluate others who make risky decisions on their behalf, and how such evaluations affect delegated risk-taking. A decision maker acts on behalf of a client who holds the decision maker accountable by way of a subjective evaluation after observing a risky decision’s outcome. If evaluation is biased towards the outcome, it may have dysfunctional effects with respect to delegated risk-taking in that decision makers’ risk choices are increasingly misaligned with their clients’ risk preferences. We find evidence giving support to this conjecture. Across and within three experiments, we test for the effects of different types and degrees of accountability in that we manipulate the information available to clients as well as the consequences which evaluations have for decision makers. Evaluations are biased towards outcomes in all experiments. When evaluations affect decision maker’s compensations, a stronger outcome bias in evaluations translates into risk-taking decisions being less frequently aligned with clients’ risk preferences. In the same situation, giving clients the opportunity to make peer comparisons increases outcome bias. We further find that clients do not hold decision makers accountable for their risk choices when they cannot observe the risk-taking decision, but have to infer it from observing the outcome. Theoretical and practical implications of the results are discussed.