Cracking Down on Bribery

Sheheryar Banuri and Catherine Eckel

MPRA Paper from University Library of Munich, Germany

Abstract: Do crackdowns on bribery impact corrupt behavior in the long run? In this paper we observe the long-run impact of a short-term punishment institution (i.e., a crackdown) on bribery behavior in a lab setting. We conduct lab experiments in two countries with cultures that differ in corruption norms, and which experience very different levels of bribery: the US and Pakistan. Bribery is implemented in the laboratory as a repeated three-player sequential game, consisting of a firm, a government official and a citizen. The design contains three phases: pre-crackdown, crackdown, and post-crackdown. Results show that post-crackdown behavior is not significantly different from the pre-crackdown behavior in either country. We conclude that short-term crackdowns may impact behavior in the short run, depending on the strength of the existing corruption norms in the country. More importantly, in our setting crackdowns are completely ineffective in the long run, as corrupt behavior rebounds to pre-crackdown levels.

Keywords: Bribery; Corruption; Experiments; Punishment; Culture (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: C91 D73 K42 Z13 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2015
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-exp and nep-law
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (17)

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Journal Article: Cracking down on bribery (2015)
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