The Tipping Point of Temptation: Prevention, Sanctions, and Selection into Public Service

Marco Rosso

Working Paper CRENoS from Centre for North South Economic Research, University of Cagliari and Sassari, Sardinia

Abstract: Corruption opportunities attract people who would exploit them and repel people who anticipate the cost of resisting them. I study both margins in a model of occupational choice with self-control costs. Three results stand out. First, when temptation is strong, small corruption rents can shrink the pool of entrants. Second, the public sector can lose integrity while it shrinks, so a stable or falling headcount can conceal a deteriorating workforce. Third, at equal net corrupt surplus, removing corruption opportunities yields weakly lower corruption than deferred sanctions, both ata given wage and with a fixed number of posts. When rents rise with the share of corrupt incumbents, the ranking carries over to steady states, and prevention can eliminate a highcorruption equilibrium that an equivalent sanction preserves.

Keywords: occupational selection; self-control and temptation; corruption; deterrence; public-sector labor markets; multiple equilibria (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: D73 D91 H83 J45 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2026
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-lma
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:cns:cnscwp:202615

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