IMPACT OF INCOME DISTRIBUTION ON POLICY PLEDGES: AN EXPERIMENTAL ANALYSIS ON DECISIONS OF DISTRIBUTION OF INCOME

Mechanisms that shape decisions of individuals while making distribution decisions that affect others are at the intersection of economics, politics and psychology and form the basis of many theories. Policy promises made and the ways in which these promises were kept have been examined form different perspectives in each of the three areas. In this study, we aim to examine the preference in making and keeping promises in a political competition setup. Participants in the voting game that we have designed are either voters or politicians. Politician participants compete by making policy promises at the elections on the distribution of income for voters, over the budget given to them. Voters with heterogeneous initial revenues vote by referring to the income distribution proposals of each politician for different income groups. As a result of the election, the elected politician is asked to decide on his/her actual distribution of income for voters. There are two main questions that we aim to answer with this experiment: How do the participants in the role of politician shape their strategy of promises? And do the winning politicians keep their promises? Our results indicate that individuals shape promises to win elections, but promises of a high-income group are kept less than promises given to low and middle-income groups