IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/aea/aerins/v5y2023i4p511-26.html

Dishonesty and Public Employment

Author

Listed:
  • Guillermo Cruces
  • Martín A. Rossi
  • Ernesto Schargrodsky

Abstract

We exploit a natural experiment to study the causal link between dishonest behavior and public employment. When military conscription was mandatory in Argentina, eligibility was determined by both a lottery and a medical examination. To avoid conscription, individuals at risk of being drafted had strong incentives to cheat in their medical examination. These incentives varied with the lottery number. Exploiting this exogenous variation, we first present evidence of cheating in medical examinations. We then show that individuals with a higher probability of having cheated in health checks exhibit a higher propensity to occupy nonmeritocratic public sector jobs later in life.

Suggested Citation

  • Guillermo Cruces & Martín A. Rossi & Ernesto Schargrodsky, 2023. "Dishonesty and Public Employment," American Economic Review: Insights, American Economic Association, vol. 5(4), pages 511-526, December.
    • Handle: RePEc:aea:aerins:v:5:y:2023:i:4:p:511-26
    DOI: 10.1257/aeri.20220550
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://www.aeaweb.org/doi/10.1257/aeri.20220550
    Download Restriction: no
    File URL: https://doi.org/10.3886/E185801V1
    Download Restriction: no
    File URL: https://www.aeaweb.org/doi/10.1257/aeri.20220550.appx
    Download Restriction: no
    File URL: https://www.aeaweb.org/doi/10.1257/aeri.20220550.ds
    Download Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to AEA members and institutional subscribers.
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1257/aeri.20220550?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    Other versions of this item:

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Tomás Marotta & Tomás Pacheco & Abigail Riquelme & Martín Rossi & Federico Sturzenegger, 2025. "The Political Economy of Regulation: Origins, Distortions, and the Case for Deregulation," Working Papers 175, Universidad de San Andres, Departamento de Economia, revised Dec 2025.

    More about this item

    JEL classification:

    • D91 - Microeconomics - - Micro-Based Behavioral Economics - - - Role and Effects of Psychological, Emotional, Social, and Cognitive Factors on Decision Making
    • J45 - Labor and Demographic Economics - - Particular Labor Markets - - - Public Sector Labor Markets
    • K42 - Law and Economics - - Legal Procedure, the Legal System, and Illegal Behavior - - - Illegal Behavior and the Enforcement of Law
    • O15 - Economic Development, Innovation, Technological Change, and Growth - - Economic Development - - - Economic Development: Human Resources; Human Development; Income Distribution; Migration

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:aea:aerins:v:5:y:2023:i:4:p:511-26. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Michael P. Albert (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/aeaaaea.html .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.