Good decision vs. good results: Outcome bias in the evaluation of financial agents [Dataset]

DOI

We document outcome bias in situations where an agent makes risky financial decisions for a principal. In three experiments, we show that the principal’s eval- uations and financial rewards for the agent are strongly affected by the random outcome of the risky investment. This happens despite her exact knowledge of the investment strategy, which can, therefore, be assessed independently of the out- come. The principal thus judges the same decision by the agent differently, depending on factors that the agent has no influence on. The effect of outcomes persists in a setting where principals communicate a preferred investment level. Principals are more satisfied with the agent after a random success when the agent did not follow the requested investment level, than after a failed investment that followed their explicit request.

Identifier
DOI https://doi.org/10.11588/data/HQW24W
Related Identifier https://doi.org/10.1007/s11238-020-09773-1
Metadata Access https://heidata.uni-heidelberg.de/oai?verb=GetRecord&metadataPrefix=oai_datacite&identifier=doi:10.11588/data/HQW24W
Provenance
Creator König-Kersting, Christian; Pollmann, Monique; Potters, Jan; Trautmann, Stefan T. ORCID logo
Publisher heiDATA
Contributor Trautmann, Stefan T.; heiDATA: Heidelberg Research Data Repository
Publication Year 2020
Rights info:eu-repo/semantics/openAccess
OpenAccess true
Contact Trautmann, Stefan T. (Alfred-Weber-Institute of Economics)
Representation
Resource Type Dataset
Format text/tab-separated-values; application/x-stata-syntax; application/vnd.ms-excel.sheet.macroenabled.12; application/pdf
Size 174980; 210430; 16670; 253816; 228286; 39060; 39024; 10164; 273524; 5494; 155248; 155922; 129738
Version 1.1
Discipline Agriculture, Forestry, Horticulture, Aquaculture; Agriculture, Forestry, Horticulture, Aquaculture and Veterinary Medicine; Life Sciences; Social Sciences; Social and Behavioural Sciences; Soil Sciences