A Solution to the Problem of Deception in Economics Experiments.

This paper outlines a method of procuring the benefits of deception in experiments without actually deceiving subjects, which should be suitable for many experimental economics environments. This is done by a modification of an already standard design, the Random Lottery incentive system, which replaces the deceptive scenarios of designs which use deceit with fictitious scenarios, each of which, from a subject's viewpoint, has a chance of being true. It is shown that Weimann's (1994) experiment, which used deception, could be re-run using the new design so as to eliminate the deception completely.