The Microeconomics of Corruption. A Review of Thirty Years of Research

José García-Montalvo, Juan-José Ganuza and Roberto Burguet

No 908, Working Papers from Barcelona School of Economics

Abstract: We review microeconomic research on corruption from the last thirty years. We start by analyzing the seminal models of corruption built on three-tier, delegation models. Then, go into more details of the context of corrupt deals, and discuss the main economic factors that affect corruption. We discuss incentives and compensation in bureaucracies, and the interplay of market and bureaucratic structure. Competition and contract design will also be reviewed in relation to procurement under corruptible agents. After reviewing the theoretical contributions, we turn to the empirical evidence. We begin discussing measurement issues, and then move to the analysis of the empirical evidence relative to the theoretical models discussed in previous sections. Finally, we cover several anti-corruption mechanisms proposed in the literature and discuss their relative merits as devices to control or eliminate illegal activities.

Keywords: competition; mechanism design; Bureaucracy; corruption; game theory; bribes; deterrence (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: C73 D72 D73 K42 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2016-06
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-cta, nep-his and nep-law
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (13)

Downloads: (external link)
https://bw.bse.eu/wp-content/uploads/2016/06/908-file.pdf (application/pdf)

Related works:
Working Paper: The microeconomics of corruption. A review of thirty years of research (2016)
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:bge:wpaper:908

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in Working Papers from Barcelona School of Economics Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Bruno Guallar ().