Experimental Studies on Moral Values in Finance : Windfall Gains, Socially Responsible Investment, and Compensation Plans.

Summary This thesis concerns decisions in complex situations that involve economic and moral values. Chapter 2 introduces moral decisions in economic contexts by proposing situations of empirical interest. The topic of Chapter 4 is restoring trust in mutual funds. The main results suggest that the positive effects of the SRI approach depend on the similarity of the individual investor's values with those of the fund. Chapter 5 provides a picture of the social acceptability of executive compensation and the social acceptability of a company's overall compensation policies. The main result indicates the existence of groups of people who are judged on the basis of personal views on the justice of compensation. Chapter 6 introduces an experimental game (the conceal-reveal dilemma) that allows for the study of individuals who have a choice between revealing and hiding benefits that would be judged as undeserved by others. The main result is that choices are not based on a cost-benefit analysis. Consequently, appealing to moral values may be an interesting alternative in such situations. Finally, the last two chapters (Chapter 7 and Chapter 8) discuss the theoretical and practical implications of these empirical results.