Corruption Bias and Information: A Study in the Lab

Germana Corrado, Luisa Corrado and Francesca Marazzi

No 505, CEIS Research Paper from Tor Vergata University, CEIS

Abstract: Our study examines whether actual corruption, measured by individuals direct experience of corruption episodes (bribery), matches their perceptions of the phenomenon. Our experimental participants play a repeated public good game with mandatory minimum contribution and are given the possibility to bribe a computerized bureaucrat in order to free-ride. We elicit beliefs about the perceived level of corruptibility of the bureaucrat and others’ corruption attempts. We study participants’ willingness to corrupt and the gap between perceived and actual corruption under two information conditions. Results show that, although anonymous, spreading news about an attempt of corruption is enough to discourage such attempts, lowering the corruption rate. Consequently, when receiving no information, participants expect others to corrupt more, raising the index of perceived corruption.

Keywords: Perceived and Experienced Corruption; Lab Experiment; Information (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: C92 D73 D90 H41 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 40 pages
Date: 2021-01-12, Revised 2021-01-12
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-exp and nep-gth
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://ceistorvergata.it/RePEc/rpaper/RP505.pdf Main text (application/pdf)

Related works:
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:rtv:ceisrp:505

Ordering information: This working paper can be ordered from
CEIS - Centre for Economic and International Studies - Faculty of Economics - University of Rome "Tor Vergata" - Via Columbia, 2 00133 Roma
https://ceistorvergata.it

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in CEIS Research Paper from Tor Vergata University, CEIS CEIS - Centre for Economic and International Studies - Faculty of Economics - University of Rome "Tor Vergata" - Via Columbia, 2 00133 Roma. Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Barbara Piazzi ().