Choosing a Public-Spirited Leader. An experimental investigation of political selection

Thomas Markussen and Jean-Robert Tyran

No 17-04, Discussion Papers from University of Copenhagen. Department of Economics

Abstract: In this experiment, voters select a leader who can either act in the public interest, i.e. make efficient and equitable policy choices, or act in a corrupt way, i.e. use public funds for private gain. Voters can observe candidates’ pro-social behavior and their score in a cognitive ability test prior to the election, and this fact is known to candidates. Therefore, self-interested candidates have incentives to act in a pro-social manner, i.e. to pretend to be public-spirited leaders. We find that both truly pro-social and egoistic leaders co-exist, but that political selection is ineffective in choosing public-spirited leaders. The main reason is that egoistic candidates strategically pretend to be pro-social to increase their chances of winning the election.

Keywords: political selection; pro-social behavior; social dilemma; corruption; voting (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: C91 C92 D03 D72 H41 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 33 pages
Date: 2017-03-24
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-cdm, nep-exp and nep-pol
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (4)

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.econ.ku.dk/english/research/publications/wp/dp_2017/1704.pdf (application/pdf)

Related works:
Journal Article: Choosing a public-spirited leader: An experimental investigation of political selection (2017)
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:kud:kuiedp:1704

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in Discussion Papers from University of Copenhagen. Department of Economics Oester Farimagsgade 5, Building 26, DK-1353 Copenhagen K., Denmark. Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Thomas Hoffmann ().