Does cronyism pay? Costly ingroup favoritism in the lab Academic Article

abstract

• AbstractCronyism in firms arises when favoritism toward an ingroup affects personnel decisions. Two main motives underlie cronyism: profit, if an ingroup employee works harder; or altruism, if used to transfer resources. In a labexperiment trust game with naturallyoccurring groups, an employer (proposer) faces an employee (responder) who is or is not an ingroup member. We see that both motives play a role. Cronyism is more likely from employers who are more altruistic to the ingroup in a dictator game; and even lowproductivity (by design) ingroup members reciprocate trust generously. Cronyism pays for those who engage in it.

authors

• Eckel, Catherine

published proceedings

• Economic Inquiry

altmetric score

• 98.8

author list (cited authors)

• Banuri, S., Eckel, C., & Wilson, R. K.

citation count

• 1

publication date

• July 2022

publisher

• Wiley  Publisher

keywords

• 38 Economics
• 3801 Applied Economics
• 3803 Economic Theory
• Clinical Research

Digital Object Identifier (DOI)

• 10.1111/ecin.13080

start page

• 1092

end page

• 1110

volume

• 60

issue

• 3

URL

• http://dx.doi.org/10.1111/ecin.13080