The Role of Framing, Inequity and History in a Corruption Game: Some Experimental Evidence

Ananish Chaudhuri,Tirnud Paichayontvijit,Erwann Sbai

doi:10.3390/g7020013

Abstract

We investigate the role of framing, inequity in initial endowments and history in shaping behavior in a corrupt transaction by extending the one-shot bribery game introduced by Cameron et al. (2009) to a repeated game setting. We find that the use of loaded language significantly reduces the incidence of bribery and increases the level of punishment. Punishment of bribery leads to reduced bribery in future. The evidence suggests that this game captures essential features of a corrupt transaction, over and above any sentiments of inequity aversion or negative reciprocity However, showing subjects the history of past play has little effect on the level of corruption.

Highlights

We investigate the role of framing, inequity in initial endowments and history in shaping behavior in a corrupt transaction by extending the one-shot bribery game introduced by Cameron et al (2009) [1]
In Round 1, 59% of the firms in our study offered a bribe and the bribe was accepted in 60% of the cases; conditional on the bribe being offered and accepted, 67% of the affected citizens chose to respond with punishment
We show that the use of loaded language, as opposed to neutral language, leads to dramatic reduction in corruption and increase in punishment

Summary

Introduction

We investigate the role of framing, inequity in initial endowments and history in shaping behavior in a corrupt transaction by extending the one-shot bribery game introduced by Cameron et al (2009) [1]to a repeated game setting. We investigate the role of framing, inequity in initial endowments and history in shaping behavior in a corrupt transaction by extending the one-shot bribery game introduced by Cameron et al (2009) [1]. At the beginning of the experiment each participant is given an initial endowment and assigned to one of three roles: a firm, an official or a citizen. If the firm does not offer a bribe, the game ends. The official will choose whether to accept or reject the bribe. If the official accepts the bribe, both the firm and the official’s payoffs increase, vis-à-vis their initial endowments, but this reduces the payoff to the citizen. If the citizen chooses punishment, this further reduces the citizen’s payoff but reduces the payoff to the firm and the official by a larger magnitude

Methods

Results

Conclusion