Who Runs? Honesty and Self-Selection into Politics

Sebastian Fehrler, Urs Fischbacher and Maik Schneider

No 10258, IZA Discussion Papers from Institute of Labor Economics (IZA)

Abstract: We examine the incentives to self-select into politics and how they depend on the transparency of the entry process. To this end, we set up a two-stage political competition model and test its key mechanisms in the lab. At the entry stage, potential candidates compete in a contest to become their party's nominee. At the election stage, the nominated candidates campaign by making non-binding promises to voters. Confirming the model's key predictions, we find in the experiment that dishonest people over-proportionally self-select into the political race; and that this adverse selection effect can be prevented if the entry stage is made transparent to voters.

Keywords: lying aversion; experiment; political economy; voting; contest; primaries; campaigns; cheap talk; elections; candidates; self-selection (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: C92 D71 D83 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 50 pages
Date: 2016-10
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-cdm, nep-pol and nep-soc
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (6)

Published - published as 'Honesty and Self-Selection into Cheap Talk' in: Economic Journal, 2020, 130, 2468-2496

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Working Paper: Who Runs? Honesty and Self-Selection into Politics (2017)
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