Research

Publications

Kajackaite, A., Niszczota, P. (2023). Lying (non-)parents: being a parent does not reduce dishonesty. Applied Economics Letters.

Galdikiene, L., Jaraite, J., Kajackaite, A. (2022). Trust and vaccination intentions: Evidence from Lithuania during the COVID-19 pandemic. PLOS ONE, 17(11). 

Huck , S., Kajackaite, A., Szech, N. (2021). Editorial: Honesty and Moral Behavior in Economic Games. Frontiers in Psychology, 4441.

Fries, T., Gneezy, U., Kajackaite, A., Parra, D. (2021). Observability and lying. Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, 189,  132-149. 

Boonmanunt, S., Kajackaite, A., Meier, S. (2020). Does poverty negate the impact of social norms on cheating? Games and Economic Behavior, 124, 569-578. 

Gneezy, U., Kajackaite, A. (2020). Externalities, stakes, and lying. Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, 178,  629-643. 

Gneezy, U., Kajackaite, A.,  Meier, S. (2020). Incentive-Based Interventions. In M. Hagger, L. Cameron, K. Hamilton, N. Hankonen, & T. Lintunen (Eds.), The Handbook of Behavior Change (Cambridge Handbooks in Psychology, pp. 523-536). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. 

Kajackaite, A., Sliwka, D. (2020). Prosocial managers, employee motivation, and the creation of shareholder value. Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, 172,  217-235. 

Chang, T. Y., Kajackaite, A. (2019). Battle for the thermostat: Gender and the effect of temperature on cognitive performance. PLOS ONE, 14(5). 

Kajackaite, A. (2018). Lying about Luck versus Lying about Performance. Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, 153, 194-199. 

Gneezy, U., Kajackaite, A., Sobel, J. (2018). Lying Aversion and the Size of the Lie. American Economic Review, 108(2), 419-453

Charness, G., Eckel, C. C., Gneezy, U., Kajackaite, A. (2018). Complexity in Risk Elicitation May Affect the Conclusions: A Demonstration Using Gender Differences. Journal of Risk and Uncertainty, 56(11), 1-17

Andersen, S., Gneezy, U., Kajackaite, A., Marx, J. (2018). Allowing for reflection time does not change behavior in Dictator and Cheating Games. Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, 145, 24-33

Kajackaite, A., Sliwka, D. (2017). Social responsibility and incentives in the lab: Why do agents exert more effort when principals donate? Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, 142, 482-493

Kajackaite, A., Gneezy, U. (2017).  Incentives and cheating. Games and Economic Behavior, 102, 433-444

Kajackaite, A. (2015). If I close my eyes, nobody will get hurt. The effect of ignorance on performance in a real effort experiment. Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, 116, 518-524 

Kajackaite, A., Werner, P. (2015) .The incentive effects of performance requirements – A real effort experiment. Journal of Economic Psychology, 49, 84-94 

Working Papers

Breaking bad: Malfunctioning institutions erode good behavior (with Rustam Hakimov), revise & resubmit at Games and Economic Behavior

This paper studies whether malfunctioning institutions erode good behavior. We use a large-scale online experiment, in which participants play a repeated observed cheating game. When we ask participants to report honestly and promise no control, we find low cheating rates. When control of truthful reporting is introduced, low cheating rates remain. In our main treatment with a malfunctioning institution, participants do not know whether they are in the treatment with or without control. In this treatment, participants who do not face control for some rounds start cheating significantly more often, reaching highest cheating rates. That is, a malfunctioning institution leads to more cheating than no institution at all, which indicates that the development of cheating behavior is endogenous to the institutions. Our findings suggest a novel negative effect of unenforced laws.

Lying for image (with Kai Barron and Silvia Saccardo), under review

The extensive theoretical and experimental economics literature on lying has focused nearly exclusively on lying for material rewards. However, in everyday interactions, lying to enhance one’s image is ubiquitous and perhaps even more common than lying to gain a financial advantage. In this paper, we introduce three novel laboratory and online experiments in which individuals can lie about their physical strength, their preferences over everyday phenomena (e.g., color, season, or food), or their favorite American President. We use these experiments to study how social- and self-image concerns affect lying behavior. Our results reveal that people commonly lie to gain a desirable image and avoid an undesirable image. Further, we demonstrate an important role of identity in determining when individuals are willing to lie, with identity-threatening lies proving to be more costly than other lies. Our findings suggest that image concerns should be considered when designing policies to deter dishonesty.

Lying Costs and Incentives (with Uri Gneezy), previous job market paper, used for papers "Lying Aversion and the Size of the Lie" and "Incentives and Cheating"

We study the structure of intrinsic lying costs and how they interact with incentives. In the first set of experiments, after replicating the finding in the cheating game literature that lying does not increase with incentives, we show that this insensitivity is not a characteristic of the intrinsic lying cost, but rather a result of concern about being exposed as a liar. In a modified “mind” game in which this concern is reduced, we find that people lie more, and in particular lie more when the incentives to do so increase. After demonstrating that lying behavior is sensitive to incentives, our second set of experiments allows us to look deeper into the structure of the intrinsic cost of lying. Our results reject the common assumption of “small lies” due to convex cost of lying. By contrast, our data are consistent with a fixed intrinsic cost of lying: when our participants lie, they do so to the full extent, whereas partial lying is rare. Combined, our results show that for many participants, the decision to lie follows a simple cost-benefit analysis: they compare the intrinsic cost of lying with the incentives to lie; once the incentives are higher than the cost, they switch from telling the truth to lying to the full extent. We discuss policy implications regarding the construction of decision options with respect to incentives.

Work in Progress

Noise and cognitive performance (with Uri Gneezy), data collected 

The effect of cooperative and non-cooperative narratives on trust during the COVID-19 pandemic (with Laura Galdikiene and Jurate Jaraite), manuscript in preparation

WO/MEN, in editing, signed with a publishing house