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Do People Pay Higher Bribes for Urgent Services ?

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  • Quoc-Anh Do

    (ECON - Département d'économie (Sciences Po) - Sciences Po - Sciences Po - CNRS - Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique)

  • Trang Van Nguyen

    (Banque Mondiale - Banque Mondiale)

  • Anh Tran

    (Indiana University - Indiana University [Bloomington] - Indiana University System)

Abstract

We study how the urgency of a public service affects its corruption level by analyzing thousands of reported bribes made by inpatients to doctors and nurses in Vietnam. Although it is commonly expected that citizens need to pay a higher bribe to receive a more valuable or urgent service, we find the opposite. Acute patients, despite having conceivably higher benefits of treatment, are 8 percentage points less likely than non-acute patients to pay bribes. If they do, they pay 18% less in bribes. This behavior suggests that even in a highly corrupt environment, public servants face an incentive to provide important services for citizens. To understand this incentive, we show that acute patients pay relatively lower bribes in facilities that are better monitored and audited more frequently.

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  • Quoc-Anh Do & Trang Van Nguyen & Anh Tran, 2013. "Do People Pay Higher Bribes for Urgent Services ?," Working Papers hal-03460769, HAL.
    • Handle: RePEc:hal:wpaper:hal-03460769
    Note: View the original document on HAL open archive server: https://sciencespo.hal.science/hal-03460769
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    References listed on IDEAS

    as
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