Dishonesty and Selection into Public Service

Rema Hanna and Shing-Yi Wang
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Rema Hanna: Harvard University

Working Paper Series from Harvard University, John F. Kennedy School of Government

Abstract: In this paper, we demonstrate that university students who cheat on a simple task in a laboratory setting are more likely to state a preference for entering public service. Importantly, we also show that cheating on this task is predictive of corrupt behavior by real government workers, implying that this measure captures a meaningful propensity towards corruption. Students who demonstrate lower levels of prosocial preferences in the laboratory games are also more likely to prefer to enter the government, while outcomes on explicit, two-player games to measure cheating and attitudinal measures of corruption do not systematically predict job preferences. We find that a screening process that chooses the highest ability applicants would not alter the average propensity for corruption among the applicant pool. Our findings imply that differential selection into government may contribute, in part, to corruption. They also emphasize that screening characteristics other than ability may be useful in reducing corruption, but caution that more explicit measures may offer little predictive power.

JEL-codes: H10 J20 O10 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2013-12
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-evo and nep-exp
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Citations: View citations in EconPapers (23)

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https://research.hks.harvard.edu/publications/getFile.aspx?Id=1009

Related works:
Working Paper: Dishonesty and Selection into Public Service (2013)
Working Paper: Dishonesty and Selection into Public Service (2013)
Working Paper: Dishonesty and Selection into Public Service (2013)
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:ecl:harjfk:rwp13-049

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