Morality, Altruism, and Occupation Choice: Theory and Evidence

Arbeitspapier

We consider a private sector job that offers high-powered incentives and two public sector jobs that produce an identical public good, but only one of them offers opportunities for corruption. Our theoretical predictions relate occupation and effort choices, in these three jobs, to preferences for altruism and morality that are structurally estimated. The predictions are tested in pre-registered experiments. We also estimate proxies for altruism/morality from the dictator/die-rolling games. We demonstrate the mutual portability of parameters between both sets of games. Those choosing the private sector job use a simple heuristic of maximizing legal monetary payoffs, but they are not less altruistic or less moral; they exhibit context dependent preferences. Conditional on choosing the public sector, less moral subjects are more likely to choose the corrupt public sector job. The effects of altruism on occupational choice are subtle, but altruism positively influences the effort choices in the public sector. The majority of subjects choose the corrupt public sector job, but effort is highest in the private sector. On average, corruption increases the size of the public sector, although the public output received by society is identical in both public sector jobs.

Object Details

• Language: Englisch

References and Relationships

• Bibliographic citation: Series: CESifo Working Paper ; No. 10162

Classification and Topics

• Classification: Wirtschaft ; Microeconomic Behavior: Underlying Principles ; Micro-Based Behavioral Economics: Role and Effects of Psychological, Emotional, Social, and Cognitive Factors on Decision Making‡
• Subject: morality ; altruism ; institutional corruption ; occupational choice ; effort choice ; portability of behavioural parameters

Contributors, Places and Time

• Event: Geistige Schöpfung
• (who): Dhami, Sanjit ; Wei, Mengxing ; Mamidi, Pavan
• Event: Veröffentlichung
• (who): Center for Economic Studies and ifo Institute (CESifo)
• (where): Munich
• (when): 2022

Further information

• Handle: http://hdl.handle.net/10419/271806
• Last update: 10.03.2025, 11:41 AM CET