Starving and deceiving: Are politicians with childhood famine exposure more honest?

Abstract Dishonest politicians can jeopardize economic development. How do disasters change politicians’ incentives to lie? We employ a difference-in-differences approach to show that public officials who were exposed to China’s 1959–1961 famine as children (aged 0–6 years) are less likely to manipulate local GDP calculations; the reduction is more significant for officials who were more severely impacted by the disaster. We further reveal that famine-exposed local politicians take stronger moral stances on honesty, and are thus more reluctant to lie. The paper highlights how fraudulent policymaking in the past alters society’s long-term welfare through changing future government officials’ behaviors.