Jessica Leight (Williams) will present:

"Value For Money? Vote-Buying and Politician Accountability in the Laboratory"

at 3:00pm on Wednesday, April 27, 2016 in 310 Silsby

Please sign up for a meeting, or lunch at:

 

Abstract

While vote-buying is observed in a diverse set of polities worldwide, little is known about the channels through which it affects subsequent governance outcomes. Using laboratory experiments conducted in the U.S. and Kenya, we show that vote-buying can weaken political accountability and increase rent-seeking by the incumbent politician. Specifically, we collect data from 816 subjects engaged in a simple voting game in which voters have an opportunity to punish a politician who expropriates rents from a common treasury. We find that voters who receive "a payment in exchange for your vote" increase the maximum amount they will allow the politician the expropriate while still voting to reelect him. Politicians, in turn, expropriate more when vote-buying is introduced. We provide evidence that social preferences, particularly reciprocity and inequality aversion, are an important channel for subjects' response to payments. Our finding point to the importance of linking democratization initiatives in the developing world to the strengthening of non-electoral institutions of accountability.