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Politicians and their promises in an uncertain world: Evidence from a lab-in-the-field experiment in India

Author

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  • Prasenjit Banerjee
  • Vegard Iversen
  • Sandip Mitra
  • Antonio Nicolò
  • Kunal Sen

Abstract

In emerging economies, pro-social policy outcomes may be prevented by bureaucratic inefficiency, capture by elected or non-elected office holders, or by other hurdles. For local citizens, uncertainty about the true cause of such failures often prevails. We study the pro-sociality of politicians' decision-making in a modified dictator game with real politician participants in rural India. In our game, a recipient citizen does not know whether dictator politician capture or bad luck is to blame when receiving zero.

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  • Prasenjit Banerjee & Vegard Iversen & Sandip Mitra & Antonio Nicolò & Kunal Sen, 2019. "Politicians and their promises in an uncertain world: Evidence from a lab-in-the-field experiment in India," WIDER Working Paper Series wp-2019-60, World Institute for Development Economic Research (UNU-WIDER).
    • Handle: RePEc:unu:wpaper:wp-2019-60
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    More about this item

    Keywords

    Asymmetric information; Lab-in-field experiment; Politician;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • H11 - Public Economics - - Structure and Scope of Government - - - Structure and Scope of Government
    • D64 - Microeconomics - - Welfare Economics - - - Altruism; Philanthropy; Intergenerational Transfers
    • O12 - Economic Development, Innovation, Technological Change, and Growth - - Economic Development - - - Microeconomic Analyses of Economic Development

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