An Offer You Can't Refuse? Testing Undue Inducement
CESifo, Munich, 2017
CESifo Working Paper No. 6296
Around the world, laws limit incentives for transactions such as clinical trial participation, egg donation, or gestational surrogacy. A key reason is the notion of undue inducement−the conceptually vague and empirically largely untested idea that incentives cause harm by distorting individual decision making. Two experiments, including one based on a highly visceral transaction, show that incentives bias information search. Yet, such behavior is also consistent with Bayes-rational behavior. I develop a criterion that indicates whether choices admit welfare weights on benefit and harm that justify permitting the transaction but capping incentives. In my experimental data, no such weights exist.
Social Protection
Behavioural Economics