Dishonesty and Public Employment

Guillermo Cruces, Martín Rossi and Ernesto Schargrodsky

American Economic Review: Insights, 2023, vol. 5, issue 4, 511-26

Abstract: We exploit a natural experiment to study the causal link between dishonest behavior and public employment. When military conscription was mandatory in Argentina, eligibility was determined by both a lottery and a medical examination. To avoid conscription, individuals at risk of being drafted had strong incentives to cheat in their medical examination. These incentives varied with the lottery number. Exploiting this exogenous variation, we first present evidence of cheating in medical examinations. We then show that individuals with a higher probability of having cheated in health checks exhibit a higher propensity to occupy nonmeritocratic public sector jobs later in life.

JEL-codes: D91 J45 K42 O15 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2023
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.aeaweb.org/doi/10.1257/aeri.20220550 (application/pdf)
https://doi.org/10.3886/E185801V1 (text/html)
https://www.aeaweb.org/doi/10.1257/aeri.20220550.appx (application/pdf)
https://www.aeaweb.org/doi/10.1257/aeri.20220550.ds (application/zip)
Access to full text is restricted to AEA members and institutional subscribers.

Related works:
Working Paper: Dishonesty and Public Employment (2023)
Working Paper: Dishonesty and Public Employment (2020)
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:aea:aerins:v:5:y:2023:i:4:p:511-26

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
https://www.aeaweb.org/journals/subscriptions

DOI: 10.1257/aeri.20220550

Access Statistics for this article

American Economic Review: Insights is currently edited by Amy Finkelstein

More articles in American Economic Review: Insights from American Economic Association Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Michael P. Albert ().