Competence versus Honesty: What Do Voters Care About?

Fabio Galeotti (1) , Daniel John Zizzo (2)

1 GATE Lyon Saint-Étienne - Groupe d'Analyse et de Théorie Economique Lyon - Saint-Etienne
2 University of Newcastle, UK

We set up an experiment to measure voter preferences trade-offs between competence and honesty. We measure the competence and honesty of candidates by asking them to work on a real effort task and decide whether to report truthfully or not the value of their work. In the first stage, the earnings are the result of the competence and honesty of one randomly selected participant. In the second stage, subjects can select who will determine their earnings based on the fi rst stage's competence and honesty of the alternative candidates. We find that most voters tend to have a bias towards caring about honesty even when this results in lower payoffs.

Mots clés: election; Voting preferences; competence; honesty

Domaines: Economies et finances

Fabio Galeotti, Daniel John Zizzo. Competence versus Honesty: What Do Voters Care About?. 2015. ⟨halshs-01180812⟩