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Publications
WP-EC 2015-04
Elected Officials’ Opportunistic Behavior on Third-Party Punishment: An Experimental Analysis
Jiménez, N. and Solano, A.
Year of publication: 2015
Keywords: Opportunism, Punishment, Public Goods Games, Voting, Experiments
JEL Classification: C92, D72, H4
DOI: http://dx.medra.org/10.12842/WPASEC-2015-04
Abstract
In this paper we analyze how the punishment behavior of a democratically elected official varies when facing an electoral process (opportunism). To this aim, we conduct an economic experiment in which officials are third-party punishers in a public goods game. We consider two different scenarios which differ in the degree of cooperation within the society. We find that officials increase their punishment when they face elections in both scenarios. Contrary to candidates' expectations, voters always vote for the least severe candidate.