Author: cprokop

Publication in IPMJ

Do future bureaucrats punish more? The Effect of PSM and studying Public Administration on Contributions and Punishment in a Public Goods Game, International Public Management Journal (forthcoming), with Markus Tepe

Abstract:

This study tests the effect of PSM and studying public administration on subjects’ behavior in a repeated Public Goods Game with a costly option to punish free riders. Conducting the experiment on 136 students from three subject pools (public administration, social science and business science) shows the following: (1) PSM has a twofold effect, as compassion is associated with higher contributions and attraction to policy making is associated with punishing free riders. (2) Students of public administration do not contribute more than the other two student groups, but they are more likely to punish free riders. (3) Both, attraction to policy making and studying public administration, are associated with more severe behavior towards free riding, as these subjects punish even small amounts of free riding. Due to its implications for policy-implementation, it seems to be worthwhile to pay more attention to preferences of social norm enforcement when selecting public personnel.

IRSPM SIG on PSM, PhD-seminar in Utrecht

I present a preliminary version of the study “On the Support for Equal Employment Opportunity Policies: The Effect of PSM, Political Attitudes, and Public Sector Work” (together with Michael Jankowski and Markus Tepe) which addresses the questions  what drives attitudes towards EEO policies and which mechanisms lead to perceiving a trade-off between EEO policies and migrant-representation.

Thanks for organizing the PhD-Seminar “Hard questions about Public Service Motivation” to Gene A. Brewer, Adrian Ritz, and Wouter Vandenabeele and for the valuable discussions to all participants of this workshop.

Talk at Rutgers University in October 2018

I presented a preliminary version of the study “Who wants to jeopardize the merit principle? Evidence from an Issue Framing Experiment among Citizens and Future Bureaucrats” (together with Michael Jankowski and Markus Tepe) which addresses the question whether critics of Equal Employment Opportunity policies are correct by stating that supporters of these policies are willing to give up the merit principle in public hiring. We find a relationship between right-wing poltical attitudes and overemphasizing support for the merit principle when potential migrant discrimination is taken into account. The findings count for civic respondents as well as respondents with a public administration background.

Thanks to Gregg Van Ryzin and Sebastian Jilke from the School of Public Affairs and Administration, Rutgers University Newark/New Jersey,
USA, for inviting me to present recent work and to all participants for their fruitful comments on the paper.

Annual Meeting of the DVPW working group decision theory, 2018

Presenting recent work toward the behavioral consequences of self-reported risk attitudes on experimentally measured risk behavior and how this relationship is moderated by gender (“Risk attitudes, gender, and risk behavior: Evidence from two laboratory experiments”) at the annual meeting of the DVPW working group decision theory (AK Handlungs- und Entscheidungstheory) in Oldenburg/Germany from 31. May to 1. June 2018.

Publication JPART March 2018

Are future bureaucrats more risk averse? The effect of studying public administration and PSM on risk preferences (with Markus Tepe)

Abstract:

This study tests the effect of studying public administration and self-reported Public Service Motivation (PSM) on risk preferences. We conduct a compound lottery choice experiment with monetary rewards to measure risk behavior and a post-experiment survey to measure risk attitudes and PSM on three student subject pools. Empirical findings suggest that: First, students of public administration consider themselves more risk averse, but they do not behave more risk averse in the compound lottery choice experiment than business sciences and law students. Second, self-reported PSM is positively associated with risk-averse behavior in the compound lottery choice experiment. Thus, contrary to the popular stereotypical description of bureaucratic behavior, there are no substantive differences in risk behavior among future bureaucrats compared to other student groups.