Transparency and Policy Competition: Experimental Evidence from German Citizens and Politicians

Sebastian Blesse (), Philipp Lergetporer (), Justus Nover and Katharina Werner
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Sebastian Blesse: Ludwig Erhard ifo Center for Social Market Economy and Institutional Economics and CESifo and ZEW Mannheim
Philipp Lergetporer: Technical University of Munich, TUM School of Management, TUM Campus Heilbronn and CESifo

Munich Papers in Political Economy from Munich School of Politics and Public Policy and the School of Management at the Technical University of Munich

Abstract: A lack of transparency about policy performance can pose a major obstacle to welfare-enhancing policy competition across jurisdictions. In parallel surveys with German citizens and state parliamentarians, we document that both groups misperceive the performance of their state’s education system. Experimentally providing performance information polarizes citizens’ political satisfaction between high- and low-performing states and increases their demand for greater transparency of states’ educational performance. Parliamentarians’ support for the transparency policy is opportunistic: Performance information increases (decreases) policy support in high-performing (low-performing) states. We conclude that increasing the public salience of educational performance information may incentivize politicians to implement welfare-enhancing reforms.

Keywords: yardstick competition; beliefs; information; citizens; politicians; survey experiment (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: D83 H11 I28 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 55 pages
Date: 2023-02
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-exp and nep-pol
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (1)

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https://cms.mgt.tum.de/fileadmin/mgt.tum.de/facult ... etition_17022023.pdf

Related works:
Working Paper: Transparency and Policy Competition: Experimental Evidence from German Citizens and Politicians (2023)
Working Paper: Transparency and Policy Competition: Experimental Evidence from German Citizens and Politicians (2023)
Working Paper: Transparency and Policy Competition: Experimental Evidence from German Citizens and Politicians (2023)
Working Paper: Transparency and policy competition: Experimental evidence from German citizens and politicians (2023)
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:aiw:wpaper:27

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