Abstract
Harassment bribes, paid by citizens to corrupt officers for services the former are legally entitled to, constitute one of the most widespread forms of corruption in many countries. Nation states have adopted different policies to address this form of corruption. While some countries make both the bribe giver and the bribe taker equally liable for the crime, others impose a larger penalty on corrupt officers. We examine the consequences of asymmetric and symmetric penalties by developing deterministic and stochastic evolutionary game-theoretic models of bribery. We find that the asymmetric penalty scheme can lead to a reduction in incidents of bribery. However, the extent of reduction depends on how the players update their strategies over time. If the interacting members change their strategies with a probability proportional to the payoff of the alternative strategy option, the reduction in incidents of bribery is less pronounced. Our results indicate that changing from a symmetric to an asymmetric penalty scheme may not suffice in achieving significant reductions in incidents of harassment bribery.
Highlights
Corruption is a pervasive problem in all nation states but especially in developing countries [1] where it leads to huge losses in revenue for the exchequer, erosion of social justice, violation of human rights and exploitation of vulnerable people in society
We find that the asymmetric liability scenario facilitates significant reduction in bribery incidents compared to the symmetric liability scenario under generic circumstances
Rational choice models suggest that corrupt officers should demand the maximum possible bribe that is consistent with the cost of the service. This conclusion is valid in the asymmetric liability without refunds and in the symmetric liability scenarios but in the case of asymmetric liability with refund we find the interesting result that too large a bribe-demand leads to the elimination of the corrupt officers
Summary
Corruption is a pervasive problem in all nation states but especially in developing countries [1] where it leads to huge losses in revenue for the exchequer, erosion of social justice, violation of human rights and exploitation of vulnerable people in society. Bribery can be categorized into two classes; one where an individual or group pays a bribe to illegally get access to a product or service (collusive bribes) and another class where an individual or a group has to pay a bribe to get a service that they are legally entitled to as citizens or residents. Examples of the latter class of bribes include bribes given to register a new property, obtain a passport, driver’s license, tax refund, a new electricity connection etc
Sign-in/Register to view highlights & summary Sign-in/Register to access full text options 
Free) 
Talk to us
Join us for a 30 min session where you can share your feedback and ask us any queries you have
Schedule a call
