EconPapers    
Economics at your fingertips  
 

Corruption and the Provision of Public Output in a Hierarchical Asymmetric Information Relationship

Sanjit Dhami and Ali Al‐nowaihi
Authors registered in the RePEc Author Service: Ali al-Nowaihi ()

Journal of Public Economic Theory, 2007, vol. 9, issue 4, 727-755

Abstract: This paper develops a principal‐agent model to explore the interaction of corruption, bribery, and political oversight of production. Under full information, an honest politician achieves the first best while a dishonest politician creates shortages and bribes. Under asymmetric information, an honest politician may create more shortages relative to a dishonest one, but the latter creates more bribes. The model identifies a tradeoff between bribery and efficiency. This helps to reconcile some conflicting results on the implications of corruption for the size of the public sector. It also provides new results on the circumstances under which an improvement in the auditing technology is beneficial. The paper identifies conditions under which corruption is welfare enhancing. However, the paper also shows that under precisely these conditions private provision, even by an unregulated monopolist, would be better than public provision.

Date: 2007
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (5)

Downloads: (external link)
https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-9779.2007.00328.x

Related works:
Working Paper: Corruption And The Provision Of Public Output In A Hierarchical Asymmetric Information Relationship (2005) Downloads
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:bla:jpbect:v:9:y:2007:i:4:p:727-755

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
http://www.blackwell ... bs.asp?ref=1097-3923

Access Statistics for this article

Journal of Public Economic Theory is currently edited by Rabah Amir, Gareth Myles and Myrna Wooders

More articles in Journal of Public Economic Theory from Association for Public Economic Theory Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Wiley Content Delivery ().

 
Page updated 2025-03-19
Handle: RePEc:bla:jpbect:v:9:y:2007:i:4:p:727-755