Dishonesty and Selection into Public Service: Evidence from India

Students who cheat on a simple laboratory task are more likely to prefer public sector jobs in India. We show that cheating on this task predicts corrupt behavior by bureaucrats, implying that it is a meaningful predictor of future corruption. Students who demonstrate pro-social preferences are less likely to prefer government jobs, while outcomes on an explicit game and attitudinal measures to measure corruption do not systematically predict job preferences. A screening process that chooses high ability applicants would not alter the average propensity for corruption. Our findings imply that differential selection into government may contribute, in part, to corruption. We thank Gabriel Scheffler, Paula Pedro, Madhumitha Hebbar, Sugat Bajracharya and Priyanka Kanth for their excellent coordination of the field activities, and extend a special thank you to Manaswini Rao, who provided invaluable insights into the field logistics. We thank Jonathan Holmes for superb research assistance. This paper has benefited from comments from or conversations with Santosh Anagol, Raymond Fisman, Guillaume Frechette, Thomas Fujiwara, Ann Harrison, Sendhil Mullainathan, Ben Olken, Sandip Sukhtankar, Asim Khwaja, Rohini Pande, Debraj Ray, and various seminar participants. All errors are our own. This study was funded in part by Harvard Dean’s Grant and the Russell Sage Foundation.