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Journal of Political Economy Vol. 121 No. 6 2013

Why Blame?

Mehmet Y. Gurdal; Joshua B. Miller1,2; Aldo Rustichini3

1 Institute for Economic Research · 2 Bocconi University · 3 University of Minnesota System

Abstract

We provide experimental evidence that subjects blame others on the basis of events they are not responsible for. In our experiment an agent chooses between a lottery and a safe asset; payment from the chosen option goes to a principal, who then decides how much to allocate between the agent and a third party. We observe widespread blame: regardless of their choice, agents are blamed by principals for the outcome of the lottery, an event they are not responsible for. We provide an explanation of this apparently irrational behavior with a delegated-expertise principal-agent model, the subjects’ salient perturbation of the environment.

DOI
10.1086/674409
Volume
121
Issue
6
Pages
1205-1247
Language
en
Sources
bibtex:phds-export.bib openalex crossref

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