Politicians will game the system to get a promotion, but only until they actually learn how to do their jobs.
April 15, 2026
Original Paper
The Half-Life of Incentive Distortion: Evidence from a Natural Experiment in Crisis
SSRN · 6569393
The Takeaway
We worry that government officials are always just 'performing' for their bosses rather than helping the public. This study of China's Zero-Covid policies found that high 'promotion incentives' did lead to more aggressive and harmful enforcement. However, this distortion has a half-life: as officials gain more real-world experience, they stop performing for a promotion and start making more practical decisions. Experience is the 'cure' for political gaming. It means that the most dangerous leaders aren't the ones who are ambitious, but the ones who are ambitious and inexperienced.
From the abstract
Career incentives distort bureaucratic behavior, but do these distortions persist over time? We exploit a discontinuity in promotion incentives at age 58 among Chinese prefecture-level party secretaries during the enforcement of the zero-Covid policy (2021–2022). Officials with stronger promotion incentives increase enforcement probability by 0.73 percentage points per unit rise in cases—approximately a 10 percent increase relative to the baseline—operating across spatial, temporal, and administ