Republic of Beliefs: An Experimental Investigation

Utteeyo Dasgupta and Fatos Radoniqi

No 14130, IZA Discussion Papers from Institute of Labor Economics (IZA)

Abstract: The success of a country's anti-corruption policies can crucially depend on the citizens' beliefs about the existing legal environment. We test this key idea of Basu (2020) using a novel design which systematically manipulates beliefs of participants in an experiment. Our results suggest that Basu's "Republic of Beliefs" idea provides a critical insight in policy formulation; Merely introducing an anti-corruption law is not sufficient in aiding the country towards the desired equilibrium, especially in developing countries, where the existing legal enforcement machinery has severe scopes of leakages.

Keywords: harassment bribery; asymmetric punishment; republic of beliefs; experiment (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: C91 K42 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 30 pages
Date: 2021-02
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 (1)

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