IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/ecj/econjl/v118y2008i532p1552-1571.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Choosing agents and monitoring consumption: a note on wealth as a corruption-controlling device

Author

Listed:
  • RafaelDi Tella
  • Federico Weinschelbaum

Abstract

There are a large number of cases where corruption has been discovered when investigating levels of consumption that appear to be hard to justify. The informativeness of an agent's level of consumption depends on his legal income and initial level of wealth, as conspicuous consumption by wealthy agents leads to little updating of the principal's belief about their honesty. This introduces a tendency to prefer poor agents as they are easier to monitor. More generally, we describe the basic problem of choosing agents and monitoring consumption with the aim of reducing corruption, and discuss features of the practical applications. Copyright © The Author(s). Journal compilation © Royal Economic Society 2008.

Suggested Citation

  • RafaelDi Tella & Federico Weinschelbaum, 2008. "Choosing agents and monitoring consumption: a note on wealth as a corruption-controlling device," Economic Journal, Royal Economic Society, vol. 118(532), pages 1552-1571, October.
    • Handle: RePEc:ecj:econjl:v:118:y:2008:i:532:p:1552-1571
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    To our knowledge, this item is not available for download. To find whether it is available, there are three options:
    1. Check below whether another version of this item is available online.
    2. Check on the provider's web page whether it is in fact available.
    3. Perform a search for a similarly titled item that would be available.

    Other versions of this item:

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Kenneth Rogoff, 1985. "The Optimal Degree of Commitment to an Intermediate Monetary Target," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 100(4), pages 1169-1189.
    2. Mookherjee, Dilip & Png, I P L, 1995. "Corruptible Law Enforcers: How Should They Be Compensated?," Economic Journal, Royal Economic Society, vol. 105(428), pages 145-159, January.
    3. Tirole, Jean, 1994. "The Internal Organization of Government," Oxford Economic Papers, Oxford University Press, vol. 46(1), pages 1-29, January.
    4. Timothy Besley & Maitreesh Ghatak, 2005. "Competition and Incentives with Motivated Agents," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 95(3), pages 616-636, June.
    5. Canice Prendergast, 1999. "The Provision of Incentives in Firms," Journal of Economic Literature, American Economic Association, vol. 37(1), pages 7-63, March.
    6. Gary S. Becker & George J. Stigler, 1974. "Law Enforcement, Malfeasance, and Compensation of Enforcers," The Journal of Legal Studies, University of Chicago Press, vol. 3(1), pages 1-18, January.
    7. HOLMSTROM, Bengt, 1979. "Moral hazard and observability," LIDAM Reprints CORE 379, Université catholique de Louvain, Center for Operations Research and Econometrics (CORE).
    8. David K. Levine & Federico Weinschelbaum & Felipe Zurita, 2010. "The Brother-In-Law Effect," International Economic Review, Department of Economics, University of Pennsylvania and Osaka University Institute of Social and Economic Research Association, vol. 51(2), pages 497-507, May.
    9. Rose-Ackerman, Susan, 1975. "The economics of corruption," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 4(2), pages 187-203, February.
    10. Rasmusen, Eric, 1992. "An Income-Satiation Model of Efficiency Wages," Economic Inquiry, Western Economic Association International, vol. 30(3), pages 467-478, July.
    11. Steven Shavell, 1979. "Risk Sharing and Incentives in the Principal and Agent Relationship," Bell Journal of Economics, The RAND Corporation, vol. 10(1), pages 55-73, Spring.
    12. Dickens, William T & Katz, Lawrence F & Lang, Kevin & Summers, Lawrence H, 1989. "Employee Crime and the Monitoring Puzzle," Journal of Labor Economics, University of Chicago Press, vol. 7(3), pages 331-347, July.
    13. Laffont, Jean-Jacques & N'Guessan, Tchetche, 1999. "Competition and corruption in an agency relationship," Journal of Development Economics, Elsevier, vol. 60(2), pages 271-295, December.
    14. Vickers, John, 1985. "Delegation and the Theory of the Firm," Economic Journal, Royal Economic Society, vol. 95(380a), pages 138-147, Supplemen.
    15. Jean-Jacques Laffont & Jean Tirole, 1993. "A Theory of Incentives in Procurement and Regulation," MIT Press Books, The MIT Press, edition 1, volume 1, number 0262121743, December.
    16. Grossman, Sanford J & Hart, Oliver D, 1983. "An Analysis of the Principal-Agent Problem," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 51(1), pages 7-45, January.
    17. Julio Rotemberg & Garth Saloner, 2000. "Visionaries, Managers, and Strategic Direction," RAND Journal of Economics, The RAND Corporation, vol. 31(4), pages 693-716, Winter.
    18. 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.
    19. Gibbons, Robert & Waldman, Michael, 1999. "Careers in organizations: Theory and evidence," Handbook of Labor Economics, in: O. Ashenfelter & D. Card (ed.), Handbook of Labor Economics, edition 1, volume 3, chapter 36, pages 2373-2437, Elsevier.
    20. Bengt Holmstrom, 1979. "Moral Hazard and Observability," Bell Journal of Economics, The RAND Corporation, vol. 10(1), pages 74-91, Spring.
    21. Walsh, Carl E, 1995. "Optimal Contracts for Central Bankers," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 85(1), pages 150-167, March.
    22. Besley, Timothy & McLaren, John, 1993. "Taxes and Bribery: The Role of Wage Incentives," Economic Journal, Royal Economic Society, vol. 103(416), pages 119-141, January.
    23. Prendergast, Canice, 2000. "Investigating corruption," Policy Research Working Paper Series 2500, The World Bank.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Abhijit Banerjee & Rema Hanna, 2012. "Corruption [The Handbook of Organizational Economics]," Introductory Chapters,, Princeton University Press.
      • Hanna, Rema N. & Mullainathan, Sendhil & Banerjee, Abhijit, 2012. "Corruption," Scholarly Articles 8830779, Harvard Kennedy School of Government.
      • Abhijit Banerjee & Sendhil Mullainathan & Rema Hanna, 2012. "Corruption," NBER Working Papers 17968, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
      • Abhijit Banerjee & Rema Hanna & Sendhil Mullainathan, 2012. "Corruption," Working Papers id:4952, eSocialSciences.
      • Banerjee, Abhijit & Hanna, Rema & Mullainathan, Sendhil, 2012. "Corruption," Working Paper Series rwp12-023, Harvard University, John F. Kennedy School of Government.
    2. Foltz, Jeremy & Li, Kangli, 2023. "Competition and corruption: Highway corruption in West Africa," Journal of Development Economics, Elsevier, vol. 163(C).
    3. Simeon Djankov & Rafael La Porta & Florencio Lopez-de-Silanes & Andrei Shleifer, 2010. "Disclosure by Politicians," American Economic Journal: Applied Economics, American Economic Association, vol. 2(2), pages 179-209, April.
    4. Simona Fabrizi & Steffen Lippert, 2017. "Corruption and the public display of wealth," Journal of Public Economic Theory, Association for Public Economic Theory, vol. 19(4), pages 827-840, August.
    5. Foltz, Jeremy D. & Li, Kangli, 2020. "Bargain to Extort: Spatial Allocation of Checkpoints and Highway Corruption in West Africa," 2020 Annual Meeting, July 26-28, Kansas City, Missouri 304449, Agricultural and Applied Economics Association.
    6. Pablo Zarate, 2021. "Signaling corruption through conspicuous consumption," Asociación Argentina de Economía Política: Working Papers 4531, Asociación Argentina de Economía Política.
    7. Marko Klašnja, 2016. "Increasing rents and incumbency disadvantage," Journal of Theoretical Politics, , vol. 28(2), pages 225-265, April.
    8. Rodrigues-Neto, José A., 2014. "On corruption, bribes and the exchange of favors," Economic Modelling, Elsevier, vol. 38(C), pages 152-162.
    9. Antoinette Schoar, 2019. "Comment on "Special Deals with Chinese Characteristics "," NBER Chapters, in: NBER Macroeconomics Annual 2019, volume 34, pages 389-394, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.

    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. Rafael Di Tella & Federico Weinschelbaum, 2005. "A Note on Wealth as a Corruption-Controlling Device," Public Economics 0503003, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    2. Eduard Marinov, 2016. "The 2016 Nobel Prize in Economics," Economic Thought journal, Bulgarian Academy of Sciences - Economic Research Institute, issue 6, pages 97-149.
    3. Nicolas Jacquemet, 2005. "La corruption comme une imbrication de contrats : Une revue de la littérature microéconomique," Working Papers 2005-29, Center for Research in Economics and Statistics.
    4. Frisell, Lars & Roszbach, Kasper & spagnolo, giancarlo, 2008. "Governing the Governors: A Clinical Study of Central Banks," Working Paper Series 221, Sveriges Riksbank (Central Bank of Sweden).
    5. repec:eee:labchp:v:3:y:1999:i:pb:p:2373-2437 is not listed on IDEAS
    6. Michael Waldman, 2012. "Theory and Evidence in Internal LaborMarkets [The Handbook of Organizational Economics]," Introductory Chapters,, Princeton University Press.
    7. Mariano Tommasi & Federico Weinschelbaum, 2007. "Principal-Agent Contracts under the Threat of Insurance," Journal of Institutional and Theoretical Economics (JITE), Mohr Siebeck, Tübingen, vol. 163(3), pages 379-393, September.
    8. David Rietzke & Yu Chen, 2020. "Push or pull? Performance‐pay, incentives, and information," RAND Journal of Economics, RAND Corporation, vol. 51(1), pages 301-317, March.
    9. Nicolas Jacquemet, 2005. "Corruption as Betrayal: Experimental Evidence on Corruption Under Delegation," Working Papers halshs-00180044, HAL.
    10. Fadi KANSO, 2008. "Wages and Penalties in Fighting Hierarchical Corruption (Tax Administration Case)," EcoMod2008 23800055, EcoMod.
    11. Oindrila Dey & Swapnendu Banerjee, 2022. "Incentives, Status and Thereafter: A Critical Survey," South Asian Journal of Macroeconomics and Public Finance, , vol. 11(1), pages 95-115, June.
    12. 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.
    13. Michael Fung, 2013. "A trade-off between non-fundamental risk and incentives," Review of Quantitative Finance and Accounting, Springer, vol. 41(1), pages 29-51, July.
    14. Dey, Oindrila & Banerjee, Swapnendu, 2014. "Status and incentives: A critical survey," MPRA Paper 57658, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    15. 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.
    16. Fadi KANSO, 2007. "Wages and Sanctions against Hierarchical Corruption," CAE Working Papers 51, Aix-Marseille Université, CERGAM.
    17. Laffont, Jean-Jacques & N'Guessan, Tchetche, 1999. "Competition and corruption in an agency relationship," Journal of Development Economics, Elsevier, vol. 60(2), pages 271-295, December.
    18. Óscar Gutiérrez & Vicente Salas-Fumás, 2014. "Options in Agency with Binary Uncertainty," Manchester School, University of Manchester, vol. 82(2), pages 218-236, March.
    19. Olivier Armantier & Amadou Boly, 2008. "Can Corruption Be Studied in the Lab? Comparing a Field and a Lab Experiment," CIRANO Working Papers 2008s-26, CIRANO.
    20. Matteo Ploner, 2007. "Personal Autonomy in Trust-Based Interactions. An Experimental Analysis," CEEL Working Papers 0701, Cognitive and Experimental Economics Laboratory, Department of Economics, University of Trento, Italia.
    21. Nicolas Jacquemet, 2005. "Corruption as Betrayal : Experimental Evidence on Corruption Under Delegation," Working Papers 0506, Groupe d'Analyse et de Théorie Economique Lyon St-Étienne (GATE Lyon St-Étienne), Université de Lyon.

    More about this item

    JEL classification:

    • D82 - Microeconomics - - Information, Knowledge, and Uncertainty - - - Asymmetric and Private Information; Mechanism Design
    • K42 - Law and Economics - - Legal Procedure, the Legal System, and Illegal Behavior - - - Illegal Behavior and the Enforcement of Law

    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:ecj:econjl:v:118:y:2008:i:532:p:1552-1571. 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: Wiley-Blackwell Digital Licensing or Christopher F. Baum (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/resssea.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.