I’m teaching an Economics of Crime course soon so I’ve been on the look out for great clips related to cheating. I think my current plan is to have a series of goofy examples of cheating. In this Ted Talk, Dan Ariely discusses some of the research from his books on honesty by describing the idea of irrationality related to honesty. The rational model of crime first flushed out by Gary Becker assumed that criminals performed a cost-benefit analysis for cheating and would only cheat if the expected benefits outweighed the costs of being caught. Ariely brings the behavioral aspect of economics into play with his discussion on the nuances around decision making, even in criminal enterprises.
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