Competence versus Honesty: What Do Voters Care About ?

Fabio Galeotti and Daniel Zizzo

No 1520, Working Papers from Groupe d'Analyse et de Théorie Economique Lyon St-Étienne (GATE Lyon St-Étienne), Université de Lyon

Abstract: We set up an experiment to measure voter preferences trade-offs between competence and honesty. We measure the competence and honesty of candidates by asking them to work on a real effort task and decide whether to report truthfully or not the value of their work. In the first stage, the earnings are the result of the competence and honesty of one randomly selected participant. In the second stage, subjects can select who will determine their earnings based on the first stage’s competence and honesty of the alternative candidates. We find that most voters tend to have a bias towards caring about honesty even when this results in lower payoffs.

Keywords: voting preferences; competence; honesty; election (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: C72 C91 D72 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2015
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 (4)

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ftp://ftp.gate.cnrs.fr/RePEc/2015/1520.pdf (application/pdf)

Related works:
Working Paper: Competence versus Honesty: What do Voters Care About? (2017)
Working Paper: Competence versus Honesty: What Do Voters Care About? (2016)
Working Paper: Competence versus Honesty: What Do Voters Care About? (2015)
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:gat:wpaper:1520

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