Honesty and Self-Selection into Cheap Talk

ABSTRACT In many situations, people can lie strategically, for their own benefit. Since individuals differ with respect to their willingness to lie, the credibility of statements will crucially depend on who self-selects into such cheap-talk situations. We study this process in a two-stage political...

Ausführliche Beschreibung

Gespeichert in:
Bibliographische Detailangaben
Veröffentlicht in:The Economic journal (London) 2020-11, Vol.130 (632), p.2468-2496
Hauptverfasser: Fehrler, Sebastian, Fischbacher, Urs, Schneider, Maik T
Format: Artikel
Sprache:eng
Schlagworte:
Online-Zugang:Volltext
Tags: Tag hinzufügen
Keine Tags, Fügen Sie den ersten Tag hinzu!
Beschreibung
Zusammenfassung:ABSTRACT In many situations, people can lie strategically, for their own benefit. Since individuals differ with respect to their willingness to lie, the credibility of statements will crucially depend on who self-selects into such cheap-talk situations. We study this process in a two-stage political competition setting. At the entry stage, potential candidates compete in a contest to become their party’s candidate in an election. At the election stage, the nominated candidates campaign by making promises to voters. Confirming the model’s key prediction, we find in our experiment that dishonest people over-proportionally self-select into the political race and thereby lower voters’ welfare.
ISSN:0013-0133
1468-0297
DOI:10.1093/ej/ueaa028