American Economic Review
ISSN 0002-8282 (Print) | ISSN 1944-7981 (Online)
Is Reputation Good or Bad? An Experiment
American Economic Review
(pp. 2187–2204)
Abstract
We investigate the impact of reputation in a laboratory experiment. We do so by varying whether the past choices of a long-run player are observable by the short-run players. Our framework allows for reputation to have either a beneficial or a harmful effect on the long-run player. We find that reputation is seldom harmful and its beneficial effects are not as strong as theory suggests. When reputational concerns are at odds with other-regarding preferences, we find th latter overwhelm the former. (JEL C91, D12, D82, D83, Z13)Citation
Grosskopf, Brit, and Rajiv Sarin. 2010. "Is Reputation Good or Bad? An Experiment." American Economic Review 100 (5): 2187–2204. DOI: 10.1257/aer.100.5.2187Additional Materials
JEL Classification
- C91 Design of Experiments: Laboratory, Individual
- D12 Consumer Economics: Empirical Analysis
- D82 Asymmetric and Private Information
- D83 Search; Learning; Information and Knowledge; Communication; Belief
- Z13 Economic Sociology; Economic Anthropology; Social and Economic Stratification