To Bribe or Not to Bribe? An Experimental Analysis of Corruption

We investigate the phenomenon of corruption in an experimental setting. The first treatment studies the role of reciprocity in establishing corrupt relationships between two agents. Corruption occurswhen public officials accept bribes and reward the briber at the expenses of others. The second treatment introduces two features that negatively affect bribery: increasing the cost of bribery and introducing the monitoring agents. In this case, corruption occurs when the monitoring agent conceals the observed bribeexchange. The last two treatments disentangle the effects of the two features affecting bribery. Our results show that high bribery cost and the presence of monitoring agents curb corrupt behaviors mildly.