Premium
Vote‐Buying and Reciprocity
Author(s) -
Finan Frederico,
Schechter Laura
Publication year - 2012
Publication title -
econometrica
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 16.7
H-Index - 199
eISSN - 1468-0262
pISSN - 0012-9682
DOI - 10.3982/ecta9035
Subject(s) - reciprocity (cultural anthropology) , obligation , reciprocal , norm of reciprocity , social psychology , politics , feeling , norm (philosophy) , survey data collection , prosocial behavior , psychology , microeconomics , economics , political science , law , social capital , mathematics , statistics , linguistics , philosophy
While vote‐buying is common, little is known about how politicians determine who to target. We argue that vote‐buying can be sustained by an internalized norm of reciprocity. Receiving money engenders feelings of obligation. Combining survey data on vote‐buying with an experiment‐based measure of reciprocity, we show that politicians target reciprocal individuals. Overall, our findings highlight the importance of social preferences in determining political behavior.