“Heavy is the head”: the effect of responsibility on delegation

Lanjouw, Max; Lee, Yuan; Pallud, Vincent; Stern, Fritz; Ziegler, Christoph

“Heavy is the head”: the effect of responsibility on delegation

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Citation

Lanjouw, M, Lee, Y, Pallud, V, Stern, F, Ziegler, C. “Heavy is the head”: the effect of responsibility on delegation. 2022. handle: http://hdl.handle.net/10230/54966

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Abstract

When deciding for themselves whether to keep or delegate a decision-making right, individuals often fail to delegate even when doing so would yield a higher expected return. However, beyond the individual decision-making context, such decisions are frequently made by parties on behalf of themselves and others. Using an innovative experimental design we identify the effects of responsibility on delegation decisions. We find that being responsible for others leads to increased delegation in the face of both losses and gains. We further investigate the channels through which the responsibility effect operates and find fear of guilt/regret to be a more powerful motivator than the desire for power. Fear of social punishment is more powerful than both of these, however.