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Dishonest People Self-Select into Public Service (In China) [pdf]

5 points by marojejian 8mo ago

marojejian 8mo ago
Found this research via the excellent episode of "Not Another Politics Podcast" (and adapted the title from them): https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/do-dishonest-people-self-select-into-public-service/id1496412542?i=1000750483979 https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/do-dishonest-people-se... I suggest listening to it. Now of course, I am shocked, shocked that politicians lie a lot. But moving beyond the cliche, I think is evidence is fascinating and important. This research follows on from a tradition which supports that dishonest people self select into public service, in countries where it is more corrupt (so the rewards seem larger): e.g. India: https://www.aeaweb.org/articles?id=10.1257/pol.20150029 https://www.aeaweb.org/articles?id=10.1257/pol.20150029 And select out of of public service where it is trustworthy (e.g. Denmark): https://www.aeaweb.org/articles?id=10.1257/pol.20170688 https://www.aeaweb.org/articles?id=10.1257/pol.20170688 I don't think this is specific to China at all (not to say there isn't cultural variance). It just happens to be a place where we have good data. This research adds great data, and interesting insights: - Plagiarism 15 years ago correlated with dishonesty today, and for a small payout. This is consistent with the theory that that some people are predictably dishonest, and even when the rewards are small. - People who plagiarize are more likely to be promoted in 5 years. - In the subset of judges in the sample, they could detect that the judgements of plagiarists were more friendly to the high-status litigants, but only if the trial had not been live-streamed to the internet. Spillover effects: - people who work for the "dishonest" Judges end up emulating their mentor's ruling patterns over time. - "Dishonest" Lawyers secure higher win rates when they face "dishonest" judges. The author concludes: Institutions are only as good as the people inside them. My experience supports this. There are always natural incentives to cheat, and thus it behooves society to construct costs to combat this. I don't think our modern society (private or public) does this well, and thus we are proportionally led by those who exploit the system, because they succeed by selection.
maxglute 8mo ago
Interesting study/methodology... the plagiarism stats seem shockingly low for 2010s PRC... ~7% baseline plagiarism rate and once you stack on civil service, promotion multipliers and works out to 10% in bureaucracy. 1/10 bad apple ratio seems pretty efficient. That said 1/10 of PRC's ~80m public sector employees is a lot of apples, incidentally CCDI cumulative prosecution is reaching like 6m+ / 8%, which maps nicely to 10% corruption floor. Note the ~7% baseline is derived from Ministry of Education CNKI anti plagiarism machine doing 100% detection/prosecution on past thesis, same level analysis in western institutions and plagiarism rates is like 15-30%. Typical western academic misconduct stats is ~1% of student body but precludes most plagiarism cases aren't elevated to misconduct for various reasons. But TLDR there seems to be much larger shadow misconduct mirage / plagiarism problem outside of PRC... and PRC was somehow never that corrupt to begin with, or at least explains how fast Xi anticorruption drive managed to crush most of the socially visible / jarring speed money (i.e. slip cops $ to get out of ticket) vanished within a few years.

5 points by marojejian 8mo ago

Found this research via the excellent episode of "Not Another Politics Podcast" (and adapted the title from them): https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/do-dishonest-people-self-select-into-public-service/id1496412542?i=1000750483979 https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/do-dishonest-people-se... I suggest listening to it. Now of course, I am shocked, shocked that politicians lie a lot. But moving beyond the cliche, I think is evidence is fascinating and important. This research follows on from a tradition which supports that dishonest people self select into public service, in countries where it is more corrupt (so the rewards seem larger): e.g. India: https://www.aeaweb.org/articles?id=10.1257/pol.20150029 https://www.aeaweb.org/articles?id=10.1257/pol.20150029 And select out of of public service where it is trustworthy (e.g. Denmark): https://www.aeaweb.org/articles?id=10.1257/pol.20170688 https://www.aeaweb.org/articles?id=10.1257/pol.20170688 I don't think this is specific to China at all (not to say there isn't cultural variance). It just happens to be a place where we have good data. This research adds great data, and interesting insights: - Plagiarism 15 years ago correlated with dishonesty today, and for a small payout. This is consistent with the theory that that some people are predictably dishonest, and even when the rewards are small. - People who plagiarize are more likely to be promoted in 5 years. - In the subset of judges in the sample, they could detect that the judgements of plagiarists were more friendly to the high-status litigants, but only if the trial had not been live-streamed to the internet. Spillover effects: - people who work for the "dishonest" Judges end up emulating their mentor's ruling patterns over time. - "Dishonest" Lawyers secure higher win rates when they face "dishonest" judges. The author concludes: Institutions are only as good as the people inside them. My experience supports this. There are always natural incentives to cheat, and thus it behooves society to construct costs to combat this. I don't think our modern society (private or public) does this well, and thus we are proportionally led by those who exploit the system, because they succeed by selection.

maxglute 8mo ago

Interesting study/methodology... the plagiarism stats seem shockingly low for 2010s PRC... ~7% baseline plagiarism rate and once you stack on civil service, promotion multipliers and works out to 10% in bureaucracy. 1/10 bad apple ratio seems pretty efficient. That said 1/10 of PRC's ~80m public sector employees is a lot of apples, incidentally CCDI cumulative prosecution is reaching like 6m+ / 8%, which maps nicely to 10% corruption floor. Note the ~7% baseline is derived from Ministry of Education CNKI anti plagiarism machine doing 100% detection/prosecution on past thesis, same level analysis in western institutions and plagiarism rates is like 15-30%. Typical western academic misconduct stats is ~1% of student body but precludes most plagiarism cases aren't elevated to misconduct for various reasons. But TLDR there seems to be much larger shadow misconduct mirage / plagiarism problem outside of PRC... and PRC was somehow never that corrupt to begin with, or at least explains how fast Xi anticorruption drive managed to crush most of the socially visible / jarring speed money (i.e. slip cops $ to get out of ticket) vanished within a few years.