Reciprocity versus Reelection

Prateik Dalmia, Allan Drazen () and Erkut Ozbay

No 27301, NBER Working Papers from National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc

Abstract: We study how reelection concerns affect reciprocity by elected leaders to the voters who elected them. If showing kindness to past voters reduces the chances of reelection, will an elected leader reduce or eliminate such intrinsic reciprocity? We present a signalling model of candidate behavior, where we show that candidates may limit intrinsic reciprocity to past voters to signal congruence with voters important for reelection, and selfish candidates may mimic reciprocal behavior for instrumental purposes. We then present an experiment that tests these ideas in the laboratory and finds support for the model. Both candidates and voters behave as the signalling model predicts. Our key finding is that the desire to be reelected may limit intrinsic reciprocity of an elected leader to the voters who put her in office, but does not eliminate it entirely.

JEL-codes: C91 D72 D78 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2020-06
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-mic and nep-pol
Note: POL
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