Civic Honesty Around the Globe with Michel Maréchal

In this episode, we are joined by Michel Maréchal from the University of Zurich to discuss his 2019 Science paper “Civic Honesty Around the Globe” co-authored with Alain Cohn, David Tannenbaum and Christian Lukas Zünd. More than seventeen thousand wallets were handed in to reception staff at various institutions in major cities across 40 countries, whereby civic honesty was elicited by the rate at which these employees attempted to contact the owner. Neither the economists nor the non-economists were able to predict what happened next. The presumed relationship between honesty and self-interest is pitted against evidence of altruistic tendencies and individuals’ self-image concerns. Tune in for a discussion of the project’s origins, logistics, design choices, publication and media controversy.