Because I (don’t) deserve it: Entitlement and lying behavior

We study the effect of entitlement on willingness to lie. set up a model lying where individuals feel more or less entitled their endowment depending how they earned it. When given opportunity lie keep endowment, who are encouraged while others discouraged. To test predictions we use laboratory experiment compare behavior participants endowed with high and low endowment. In one treatment, allocation is decided by participants’ performance, in other, it determined random draw. Our shows that deservingness influences an intuitive direction: when performance determines income, those earn money than more. do not find differences perform same task but windfall endowments.