Leader and villager behavior: Experimental evidence from Cameroon. (October 2018) - Meriggi, Niccoló F.
Highlights: We use lab-in-the field experiments to measure leadership and villager behavior. Good leadership behavior is defined as awarding efficiency. Villager behavior is operationalized as altruism, trust and trustworthiness. We find a negative correlation between "good behavior" of chiefs and villagers. Abstract: We use an inter-village study in rural Cameroon to explore how behavior of local chiefs is associated with specific behavior of common villagers. Our key variables are based on the behavior of the chief and villagers in lab-in-the-field experiments. As measures of leadership quality we use trustworthiness of the chief as measured in a trust game. As measures of norms of civil conduct we use within-village altruism, trust and trustworthiness as measured in dictator and trust games. We mainly document negative associations between leader and villager behavior, which is consistent with the view that good leadership crowds out good behavior by villagers.