Self-Selection into Corruption: Evidence from the Lab

Pablo Brassiolo, Ricardo Estrada, Gustavo Fajardo and Juan Vargas

No 18182, Documentos de Trabajo from The Latin American and Caribbean Economic Association (LACEA)

Abstract: We study whether opportunities to extract rents in a job affect the type of individuals who are attracted to it in terms of their underlying integrity. We do so in a laboratory experiment in which participants choose between two contracts that involve different tasks. We experimentally introduce the possibility of graft in one of them and study the sorting of subjects across contracts based on an incentivized measure of honesty. We find that the corruptible contract changes the composition of subjects because it attracts the most dishonest individuals and repels the most honest ones. In addition, we observe extensive graft when the opportunity is available. We introduce a double randomization strategy to disentangle the extent of which stealing responds to the aforementioned negative selection or to pure incentives (net of selection). We find that, in this setting, selection is the main driver of graft. Our results have clear policy implications to curb corruption.

Keywords: Corruption; selection; rent extraction opportunities; personnel economics (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: C91 D73 M5 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 29
Date: 2020-05-28
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-cta, nep-exp and nep-lam
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (3)

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http://vox.lacea.org/files/Working_Papers/lacea_wp ... a_fajardo_vargas.pdf

Related works:
Journal Article: Self-Selection into corruption: Evidence from the lab (2021)
Working Paper: Self-Selection into Corruption: Evidence from the Lab (2020)
Working Paper: Self-Selection into Corruption: Evidence from the Lab (2020)
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:col:000518:018182

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