Otto Hahn Medal for Sven Simon
At the 73rd Annual Meeting of the Max Planck Society on 22 June 2022, Dr Sven Simon was awarded the Otto Hahn Medal for his innovative PhD thesis investigating dishonest behaviour in an economic context.
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| (left to right): Ulman Lindenberger, Vice President of the Max Planck Society, laureate Sven Simon and Ulrich Becker, Director at the Max-Planck-Institute for Social Law and Social Policy. Photo: Max Planck Society/ David Ausserhofer |
Why do some people cheat to obtain a financial advantage, while others are seemingly incorruptible? Why do people in teams tend to be more dishonest than people who decide alone? Does the legendary opportunity make the thief, or do dishonest people deliberately seek out situations in which they can cheat? These questions are of great interest not only to psychologists but also to economists like Sven Simon, a senior research fellow at the Max Planck Institute for Tax Law and Public Finance. After all, fraudulent behaviour can cost the state, organisations and companies billions.
Individual Motives for Compliant Behaviour
With the Wirecard affair, the CumEx fraud or the Volkswagen emission scandal, three spectacular cases recently occurred in which taxpayers, investors and customers were cheated out of enormous sums. And three examples of white-collar crimes that have been going on for years, even though a whole range of people were involved and aware. Or maybe because of that?
Sven Simon tackles the question of individual motives and influencing factors for compliance decisions with the help of experimental economics. The economist is fascinated with bringing theory into the laboratory and using experiments to examine how decisions are made and what causes or conditions exist for certain behaviour. For example, for deciding more dishonestly in a group than on one’s own.
For his dissertation, Simon developed a laboratory experiment that enabled him to show that people in teams are not fundamentally more dishonest than individuals, but only under certain circumstances – namely when they share the economic consequences of their behaviour with other team members. Read more.
Dishonesty Takes Time
“Designing simple but effective experiments is both an intellectual challenge and a certain art,” says Sven Simon. It’s an art that fulfils the economist and that he masters virtuously. As part of his dissertation, for example, he was also able to show that dishonest declarations are based on a multi-stage and time-intensive cognitive process. In order to deceive, people have to be aware of the misreporting opportunity. Since this is difficult for most people under time pressure, they intuitively tend to behave honestly.
Those Who Want to Cheat also Seek the Chance
In addition, Sven Simon developed an innovative approach to measure the individual costs lying causes people for moral reasons or social norms. His experiments show that, depending on their individual aversion to dishonest behaviour, people purposefully seek out situations in which they can earn a merit in an honest or in a dishonest way. Read more.
Academic Career and Outlook
Dr. Sven Simon studied economics at the Universities of Mannheim and Copenhagen from 2009 to 2014. He wrote his PhD at the Max Planck Institute for Tax Law and Public Finance in the department of Prof. Dr. Kai A. Konrad, where he was employed as a PhD student and manager of the experimental laboratory econlab 2014–2020. Since 2020, Sven Simon has been working as a senior research fellow at the Institute.
In his research, Sven Simon is currently investigating when individuals prefer to delegate personal decision-making rights (e.g. to the state) and when they value their personal freedom of choice more. To this end, the economist is working on a series of research projects.
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| Recipients of the Otto Hahn Medal in 2022. Photo: Max Planck Society/ David Ausserhofer |
Otto Hahn Medal
The Max Planck Society has been honouring outstanding doctoral theses with the Otto Hahn Medal since 1978. The presentation of the Otto Hahn Medal for 2021, with Dr Sven Simon as one of the awardees, will take place on 22 June 2022 as part of the 72nd Annual Meeting of the Max Planck Society in Berlin.
Individual Chapters of the Award-winning Dissertation:
Konrad, K. A., Lohse, T. und Simon, S. A., 2021. Pecunia non olet: on the self-selection into (dis)honest earning opportunities. Experimental Economics, 24, S. 1105-1130. DOI: 10.1007/s10683-020-09691-7
Lohse, T. und Simon, S. A., 2021. Compliance in teams – Implications of joint decisions and shared consequences. Journal of Behavioral and Experimental Economics, 94. Article No. 101745. DOI: 10.1016/j.socec.2021.101745
Lohse, T., Simon, S. A. und Konrad, K. A., 2018. Deception under time pressure: conscious decision or a problem of awareness?. Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, 146, S. 31-42. DOI: 10.1016/j.jebo.2017.11.026
Simon, S. A., Is it a Lie if I don’t know? Self-serving dishonesty under ignorance. Working Paper of the Max Planck Institute for Tax Law and Public Finance No. 2020-12. SSRN
June 2022