Dishonesty and Selection into Public Service

In this paper, it is demonstrated that university students who cheat on a simple task in a laboratory setting are more likely to state a preference for entering public service. Importantly, it is also shown that cheating on this task is predictive of corrupt behavior by real government workers, implying that this measure captures a meaningful propensity towards corruption. Students who demonstrate lower levels of prosocial preferences in the laboratory games are also more likely to prefer to enter the government, while outcomes on explicit, two-player games to measure cheating and attitudinal measures of corruption do not systematically predict job preferences. [BREAD Working Paper No. 404].