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Time in Office and the Changing Gender Gap in Dishonesty: Evidence from Local Politics in India

Author

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  • Ananish Chaudhuri
  • Vegard Iversen
  • Francesca R. Jensenius
  • Pushkar Maitra

Abstract

Increasing the share of women in politics is regularly promoted as a means of reducing corruption. In this paper, we look for evidence of a gender gap in dishonesty among elected representatives, as well as how this changes with time in office. Based on a sample of 356 inexperienced and experienced local politicians in West Bengal, India, we combine survey data on attitudes towards corruption with data from incentivized experiments. While we find little evidence of a gender gap in the attitudes of inexperienced politicians, a lower faith in political institutions and a greater distaste for corruption can be seen among experienced politicians, particularly women. However, this seeming hardening in attitudes among female politicians also coincides with more dishonest behavior in our experiments. Exploring mechanisms for this difference, we find it to be strongly associated with lower risk aversion. Our study indicates that gender gaps in politics should be theorized as dynamic and changing, rather than static.

Suggested Citation

  • Ananish Chaudhuri & Vegard Iversen & Francesca R. Jensenius & Pushkar Maitra, 2020. "Time in Office and the Changing Gender Gap in Dishonesty: Evidence from Local Politics in India," CESifo Working Paper Series 8217, CESifo.
    • Handle: RePEc:ces:ceswps:_8217
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    Cited by:

    1. Lata Gangadharan & Tarun Jain & Pushkar Maitra & Joe Vecci, 2022. "Lab-in-the-field experiments: perspectives from research on gender," The Japanese Economic Review, Springer, vol. 73(1), pages 31-59, January.
    2. Siwan Anderson, 2022. "Unbundling female empowerment," Canadian Journal of Economics/Revue canadienne d'économique, John Wiley & Sons, vol. 55(4), pages 1671-1701, November.
    3. Ananish Chaudhuri & Vegard Iversen & Francesca R. Jensenius & Pushkar Maitra, 2020. "Selecting the Best of Us? Politician Quality in Village Councils in West Bengal, India," CESifo Working Paper Series 8597, CESifo.

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    More about this item

    Keywords

    politicians; gender; honesty; die-tossing game; experiments;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • H11 - Public Economics - - Structure and Scope of Government - - - Structure and Scope of Government
    • C93 - Mathematical and Quantitative Methods - - Design of Experiments - - - Field Experiments

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