Choosing a public-spirited leader: An experimental investigation of political selection

Thomas Markussen and Jean-Robert Tyran

Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, 2017, vol. 144, issue C, 204-218

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)
Date: 2017
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (4)

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0167268117302470
Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only

Related works:
Working Paper: 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:eee:jeborg:v:144:y:2017:i:c:p:204-218

DOI: 10.1016/j.jebo.2017.09.006

Access Statistics for this article

Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization is currently edited by Houser, D. and Puzzello, D.

More articles in Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization from Elsevier
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Catherine Liu ().