IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/hhs/umnees/1028.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Corruption: Outbribing the Competition

Author

Listed:
  • Koustougeras, Leonidas

    (University of Manchester, School of Social Sciences)

  • Santos, Manuel

    (University of Miami, School of Business Administration)

  • Xu, Fei

    (Department of Economics, Umeå University)

Abstract

We extend the prototypical models of corruption to a setting of multiple agents (donors) attempting to bribe the same body of officers. The model recognizes that corruption is a complex many-faceted phenomenon involving several layers of players (bureaucracies, committees, companies, and criminal partnerships) with dissimilar and conflicting interests. Three main ingredients drive corruption outcomes: competition among donors, uncertainty and coordination among the officers' types, and the individual payoffs of bribing. We analyze market failures and ineffciencies arising from the strategies and interactions of these parties. A policy maker may then want to design indirect anti-corruption policies based on triggering information asymmetries and adverse selection effects exploiting synergies within pools of officers and in this way impede the formation of certain criminal groups.

Suggested Citation

  • Koustougeras, Leonidas & Santos, Manuel & Xu, Fei, 2024. "Corruption: Outbribing the Competition," Umeå Economic Studies 1028, Umeå University, Department of Economics.
    • Handle: RePEc:hhs:umnees:1028
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.usbe.umu.se/ues/ues1028.pdf
    File Function: Full text
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Jakob Svensson, 2003. "Who Must Pay Bribes and How Much? Evidence from a Cross Section of Firms," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 118(1), pages 207-230.
    2. Chand, Sheetal K. & Moene, Karl O., 1999. "Controlling Fiscal Corruption," World Development, Elsevier, vol. 27(7), pages 1129-1140, July.
    3. Berninghaus, Siegfried K. & Haller, Sven & Krüger, Tyll & Neumann, Thomas & Schosser, Stephan & Vogt, Bodo, 2013. "Risk attitude, beliefs, and information in a Corruption Game – An experimental analysis," Journal of Economic Psychology, Elsevier, vol. 34(C), pages 46-60.
    4. Diego Moreno & John Wooders, 2010. "Decentralized Trade Mitigates The Lemons Problem," International Economic Review, Department of Economics, University of Pennsylvania and Osaka University Institute of Social and Economic Research Association, vol. 51(2), pages 383-399, May.
    5. Eric Avis & Claudio Ferraz & Frederico Finan, 2018. "Do Government Audits Reduce Corruption? Estimating the Impacts of Exposing Corrupt Politicians," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 126(5), pages 1912-1964.
    6. Manolis Galenianos & Rosalie Liccardo Pacula & Nicola Persico, 2012. "A Search-Theoretic Model of the Retail Market for Illicit Drugs," The Review of Economic Studies, Review of Economic Studies Ltd, vol. 79(3), pages 1239-1269.
    7. Richard Damania & Per Fredriksson & Muthukumara Mani, 2004. "The Persistence of Corruption and Regulatory Compliance Failures: Theory and Evidence," Public Choice, Springer, vol. 121(3), pages 363-390, February.
    8. Benjamin A. Olken & Rohini Pande, 2012. "Corruption in Developing Countries," Annual Review of Economics, Annual Reviews, vol. 4(1), pages 479-509, July.
    9. Nicolás Campos & Eduardo Engel & Ronald D. Fischer & Alexander Galetovic, 2021. "The Ways of Corruption in Infrastructure: Lessons from the Odebrecht Case," Journal of Economic Perspectives, American Economic Association, vol. 35(2), pages 171-190, Spring.
    10. Sequeira, Sandra & Djankov, Simeon, 2010. "An Empirical Study of Corruption in Ports," MPRA Paper 21791, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    11. John Mcmillan & Pablo Zoido, 2004. "How to Subvert Democracy: Montesinos in Peru," Journal of Economic Perspectives, American Economic Association, vol. 18(4), pages 69-92, Fall.
    12. Rauch, James E. & Evans, Peter B., 2000. "Bureaucratic structure and bureaucratic performance in less developed countries," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 75(1), pages 49-71, January.
    13. Jakob Svensson, 2005. "Eight Questions about Corruption," Journal of Economic Perspectives, American Economic Association, vol. 19(3), pages 19-42, Summer.
    14. Olken, Benjamin A., 2009. "Corruption perceptions vs. corruption reality," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 93(7-8), pages 950-964, August.
    15. Mara Faccio, 2006. "Politically Connected Firms," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 96(1), pages 369-386, March.
    16. Van Rijckeghem, Caroline & Weder, Beatrice, 2001. "Bureaucratic corruption and the rate of temptation: do wages in the civil service affect corruption, and by how much?," Journal of Development Economics, Elsevier, vol. 65(2), pages 307-331, August.
    17. Acemoglu, Daron, 1995. "Reward structures and the allocation of talent," European Economic Review, Elsevier, vol. 39(1), pages 17-33, January.
    18. Asim Ijaz Khwaja & Atif Mian, 2005. "Do Lenders Favor Politically Connected Firms? Rent Provision in an Emerging Financial Market," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 120(4), pages 1371-1411.
    19. Raymond Fisman, 2001. "Estimating the Value of Political Connections," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 91(4), pages 1095-1102, September.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Leonidas Koutsougeras & Manuel Santos & Fei Xu, 2019. "Corruption and Adverse Selection," Working Papers hal-03393076, HAL.
    2. repec:spo:wpecon:info:hdl:2441/4lon6pdcl396gav4cth8rku8os is not listed on IDEAS
    3. repec:spo:wpmain:info:hdl:2441/4lon6pdcl396gav4cth8rku8os is not listed on IDEAS
    4. repec:hal:spmain:info:hdl:2441/4lon6pdcl396gav4cth8rku8os is not listed on IDEAS
    5. repec:hal:wpspec:info:hdl:2441/4lon6pdcl396gav4cth8rku8os is not listed on IDEAS
    6. Roberto Burguet & Juan-José Ganuza & José García-Montalvo, 2016. "The Microeconomics of Corruption. A Review of Thirty Years of Research," Working Papers 908, Barcelona School of Economics.
    7. Fang, Hanming & Gu, Quanlin & Zhou, Li-An, 2019. "The gradients of power: Evidence from the Chinese housing market," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 176(C), pages 32-52.
    8. Yan Leung Cheung & P. Raghavendra Rau & Aris Stouraitis, 2012. "How much do firms pay as bribes and what benefits do they get? Evidence from corruption cases worldwide," NBER Working Papers 17981, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    9. Colonnelli, Emanuele & Lagaras, Spyridon & Ponticelli, Jacopo & Prem, Mounu & Tsoutsoura, Margarita, 2022. "Revealing corruption: Firm and worker level evidence from Brazil," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 143(3), pages 1097-1119.
    10. Yan-Leung Cheung & P. Raghavendra Rau & Aris Stouraitis, 2021. "What Determines the Return to Bribery? Evidence from Corruption Cases Worldwide," Management Science, INFORMS, vol. 67(10), pages 6235-6265, October.
    11. Gans-Morse, Jordan & Borges, Mariana & Makarin, Alexey & Mannah-Blankson, Theresa & Nickow, Andre & Zhang, Dong, 2018. "Reducing bureaucratic corruption: Interdisciplinary perspectives on what works," World Development, Elsevier, vol. 105(C), pages 171-188.
    12. Benjamin A. Olken & Rohini Pande, 2012. "Corruption in Developing Countries," Annual Review of Economics, Annual Reviews, vol. 4(1), pages 479-509, July.
    13. Maxime Delabarre, 2021. "Corruption and Development," Working Papers hal-03114382, HAL.
    14. Maxime Delabarre, 2021. "Corruption and Development," SciencePo Working papers Main hal-03114382, HAL.
    15. van Veldhuizen, R., 2013. "The influence of wages on public officials’ corruptibility: A laboratory investigation," Journal of Economic Psychology, Elsevier, vol. 39(C), pages 341-356.
    16. Krisztina Kis-Katos & Günther G. Schulze, 2013. "Corruption in Southeast Asia: a survey of recent research," Asian-Pacific Economic Literature, The Crawford School, The Australian National University, vol. 27(1), pages 79-109, May.
    17. Bologna, Jamie, 2016. "The effect of informal employment and corruption on income levels in Brazil," Journal of Comparative Economics, Elsevier, vol. 44(3), pages 657-695.
    18. Lambsdorff Johann Graf & Schulze Günther G., 2015. "Guest Editorial: Special Issue on Corruption at the Grassroots-level: What Can We Know About Corruption?," Journal of Economics and Statistics (Jahrbuecher fuer Nationaloekonomie und Statistik), De Gruyter, vol. 235(2), pages 100-114, April.
    19. Hanming Fang, 2024. "Measurements, determinants, causes, and consequences of corruption: lessons from China’s anti-corruption campaign," International Tax and Public Finance, Springer;International Institute of Public Finance, vol. 31(1), pages 3-25, February.
    20. Pande, Rohini, 2008. "Understanding Political Corruption in Low Income Countries," Handbook of Development Economics, in: T. Paul Schultz & John A. Strauss (ed.), Handbook of Development Economics, edition 1, volume 4, chapter 50, pages 3155-3184, Elsevier.
    21. Hao, Zhuoqun & Liu, Yu & Zhang, Jinfan & Zhao, Xiaoxue, 2020. "Political connection, corporate philanthropy and efficiency: Evidence from China’s anti-corruption campaign," Journal of Comparative Economics, Elsevier, vol. 48(3), pages 688-708.
    22. Bernard Gauthier & Jonathan Goyette, 2016. "Fiscal policy and corruption," Social Choice and Welfare, Springer;The Society for Social Choice and Welfare, vol. 46(1), pages 57-79, January.
    23. Bernard Gauthier & Frédéric Lesne, 2018. "Reported Corruption vs. Experience of Corruption in Public Procurement Contracts," Post-Print hal-01949498, HAL.
    24. Valsecchi, Michele, 2016. "Corrupt Bureaucrats: The Response of Non-Elected Officials to Electoral Accountability," Working Papers in Economics 684, University of Gothenburg, Department of Economics.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    Corruption; bribe; adverse selection;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • D71 - Microeconomics - - Analysis of Collective Decision-Making - - - Social Choice; Clubs; Committees; Associations
    • D80 - Microeconomics - - Information, Knowledge, and Uncertainty - - - General
    • D82 - Microeconomics - - Information, Knowledge, and Uncertainty - - - Asymmetric and Private Information; Mechanism Design
    • D86 - Microeconomics - - Information, Knowledge, and Uncertainty - - - Economics of Contract Law

    NEP fields

    This paper has been announced in the following NEP Reports:

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:hhs:umnees:1028. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: David Skog (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/inumuse.html .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.