IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/eee/irlaec/v31y2011i2p116-125.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Corrupt reciprocity - Experimental evidence on a men's game

Author

Listed:
  • Lambsdorff, Johann Graf
  • Frank, Björn

Abstract

Why are women regarded to be more resistant towards corruption? We address this question by letting students allotted the role of public servants receive a bribe and choose between reporting (whistleblowing), opportunism and reciprocity (delivery of a contract to the briber). Those acting as businesspersons choose whether or not to publicize at the end of the game. Male businesspersons more often depart from maximizing payoffs and allocate resources to punishing opportunistic public servants. Instead of acting opportunistically, some public servants tend to reciprocate or report. We find that female public servants are less inclined to reciprocate. Their resistance towards corruption is found to relate less to a willingness to report. Survey data from international households shows that men are more confident that bribes will be reciprocated, supporting our results.

Suggested Citation

  • Lambsdorff, Johann Graf & Frank, Björn, 2011. "Corrupt reciprocity - Experimental evidence on a men's game," International Review of Law and Economics, Elsevier, vol. 31(2), pages 116-125, June.
    • Handle: RePEc:eee:irlaec:v:31:y:2011:i:2:p:116-125
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0144818811000226
    Download Restriction: Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to search for a different version of it.

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Hoffman Elizabeth & McCabe Kevin & Shachat Keith & Smith Vernon, 1994. "Preferences, Property Rights, and Anonymity in Bargaining Games," Games and Economic Behavior, Elsevier, vol. 7(3), pages 346-380, November.
    2. Nicolas Jacquemet, 2005. "Corruption as Betrayal: Experimental Evidence on Corruption Under Delegation," Working Papers halshs-00180044, HAL.
    3. Swamy, Anand & Knack, Stephen & Lee, Young & Azfar, Omar, 2001. "Gender and corruption," Journal of Development Economics, Elsevier, vol. 64(1), pages 25-55, February.
    4. Lambsdorff, Johann Graf & Frank, Björn, 2010. "Bribing versus gift-giving - An experiment," Journal of Economic Psychology, Elsevier, vol. 31(3), pages 347-357, June.
    5. Klaus Abbink & Heike Hennig-Schmidt, 2006. "Neutral versus loaded instructions in a bribery experiment," Experimental Economics, Springer;Economic Science Association, vol. 9(2), pages 103-121, June.
    6. James Andreoni & Lise Vesterlund, 2001. "Which is the Fair Sex? Gender Differences in Altruism," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 116(1), pages 293-312.
    7. Eckel, Catherine C. & Grossman, Philip J., 2008. "Differences in the Economic Decisions of Men and Women: Experimental Evidence," Handbook of Experimental Economics Results, in: Charles R. Plott & Vernon L. Smith (ed.), Handbook of Experimental Economics Results, edition 1, volume 1, chapter 57, pages 509-519, Elsevier.
    8. Barr, Abigail & Serra, Danila, 2010. "Corruption and culture: An experimental analysis," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 94(11-12), pages 862-869, December.
    9. Cameron, Lisa & Chaudhuri, Ananish & Erkal, Nisvan & Gangadharan, Lata, 2009. "Propensities to engage in and punish corrupt behavior: Experimental evidence from Australia, India, Indonesia and Singapore," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 93(7-8), pages 843-851, August.
    10. James C. Cox & Cary A. Deck, 2006. "When Are Women More Generous than Men?," Economic Inquiry, Western Economic Association International, vol. 44(4), pages 587-598, October.
    11. Klaus Abbink & Bernd Irlenbusch & Elke Renner, 2002. "An Experimental Bribery Game," The Journal of Law, Economics, and Organization, Oxford University Press, vol. 18(2), pages 428-454, October.
    12. M. Fernanda Rivas, 2013. "An Experiment On Corruption And Gender," Bulletin of Economic Research, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 65(1), pages 10-42, January.
    13. Kingston, Christopher, 2007. "Parochial corruption," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 63(1), pages 73-87, May.
    14. Günther G. Schulze & Björn Frank, 2003. "Deterrence versus intrinsic motivation: Experimental evidence on the determinants of corruptibility," Economics of Governance, Springer, vol. 4(2), pages 143-160, August.
    15. Solnick, Sara J, 2001. "Gender Differences in the Ultimatum Game," Economic Inquiry, Western Economic Association International, vol. 39(2), pages 189-200, April.
    16. Parchomovsky, Gideon & Siegelman, Peter, 2009. "Bribes vs. bombs: A study in Coasean warfare," International Review of Law and Economics, Elsevier, vol. 29(3), pages 179-190, September.
    17. Steven D. Levitt & John A. List, 2007. "What Do Laboratory Experiments Measuring Social Preferences Reveal About the Real World?," Journal of Economic Perspectives, American Economic Association, vol. 21(2), pages 153-174, Spring.
    18. Rachel Croson & Uri Gneezy, 2009. "Gender Differences in Preferences," Journal of Economic Literature, American Economic Association, vol. 47(2), pages 448-474, June.
    19. Björn Frank & Johann Graf Lambsdorff & Frédéric Boehm, 2011. "Gender and Corruption: Lessons from Laboratory Corruption Experiments," The European Journal of Development Research, Palgrave Macmillan;European Association of Development Research and Training Institutes (EADI), vol. 23(1), pages 59-71, February.
    20. Lex Borghans & Bart H. H. Golsteyn & James J. Heckman & Huub Meijers, 2009. "Gender Differences in Risk Aversion and Ambiguity Aversion," Journal of the European Economic Association, MIT Press, vol. 7(2-3), pages 649-658, 04-05.
    21. Vivi Alatas & Lisa Cameron & Ananish Chaudhuri & Nisvan Erkal & Lata Gangadharan, 2009. "Gender, Culture, and Corruption: Insights from an Experimental Analysis," Southern Economic Journal, John Wiley & Sons, vol. 75(3), pages 663-680, January.
    22. Bolle, Friedel, 1990. "High reward experiments without high expenditure for the experimenter?," Journal of Economic Psychology, Elsevier, vol. 11(2), pages 157-167, June.
    23. Abbink, Klaus & Irlenbusch, Bernd & Renner, Elke, 2000. "The moonlighting game: An experimental study on reciprocity and retribution," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 42(2), pages 265-277, June.
    24. Armin Falk & Ernst Fehr & Urs Fischbacher, 2003. "On the Nature of Fair Behavior," Economic Inquiry, Western Economic Association International, vol. 41(1), pages 20-26, January.
    25. Klaus Abbink, 2006. "Laboratory Experiments on Corruption," Chapters, in: Susan Rose-Ackerman (ed.), International Handbook on the Economics of Corruption, chapter 14, Edward Elgar Publishing.
    26. Lambsdorff, Johann Graf, 2002. "Making corrupt deals: contracting in the shadow of the law," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 48(3), pages 221-241, July.
    27. Selten, Reinhard & Ockenfels, Axel, 1998. "An experimental solidarity game," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 34(4), pages 517-539, March.
    28. Abbink, Klaus, 2004. "Staff rotation as an anti-corruption policy: an experimental study," European Journal of Political Economy, Elsevier, vol. 20(4), pages 887-906, November.
    29. Eckel, Catherine C. & Grossman, Philip J., 1996. "Altruism in Anonymous Dictator Games," Games and Economic Behavior, Elsevier, vol. 16(2), pages 181-191, October.
    30. Frank, Bjorn & Schulze, Gunther G., 2000. "Does economics make citizens corrupt?," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 43(1), pages 101-113, September.
    31. Lex Borghans & Bart H.H. Golsteyn & James J. Heckman & Huub Meijers, 2009. "Gender Differences in Risk Aversion and Ambiguity," Working Papers 200903, Geary Institute, University College Dublin.
    32. Lambsdorff,Johann Graf, 2007. "The Institutional Economics of Corruption and Reform," Cambridge Books, Cambridge University Press, number 9780521872751.
    33. Benno Torgler & Neven T. Valev, 2006. "Women and Illegal Activities: Gender Differences and Women?s Willingness to Comply over Time," CREMA Working Paper Series 2006-15, Center for Research in Economics, Management and the Arts (CREMA).
    34. Ogilvie Sheilagh, 2005. "The Use and Abuse of Trust: Social Capital and its Deployment by Early Modern Guilds," Jahrbuch für Wirtschaftsgeschichte / Economic History Yearbook, De Gruyter, vol. 46(1), pages 15-52, June.
    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. Christoph Engel, 2016. "Experimental Criminal Law. A Survey of Contributions from Law, Economics and Criminology," Discussion Paper Series of the Max Planck Institute for Research on Collective Goods 2016_07, Max Planck Institute for Research on Collective Goods.
    2. Cameron K. Murray & Paul Frijters & Markus Schaffner, 2021. "Is transparency an anti-corruption myth?," Journal of Behavioral Economics for Policy, Society for the Advancement of Behavioral Economics (SABE), vol. 5(1), pages 27-43, Septembre.
    3. 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.
    4. Joël CARIOLLE, 2018. "Corruption determinants in developing and transition economies: Insights from a multi-level analysis," Working Papers P229, FERDI.
    5. Dittrich, Dennis A.V. & Büchner, Susanne & Kulesz, Micaela M., 2015. "Dynamic repeated random dictatorship and gender discrimination," Journal of Behavioral and Experimental Economics (formerly The Journal of Socio-Economics), Elsevier, vol. 55(C), pages 81-90.
    6. Schubert, Manuel & Graf Lambsdorff, Johann, 2012. "On the costs of kindness: An experimental investigation of guilty minds and negative reciprocity," Passauer Diskussionspapiere, Volkswirtschaftliche Reihe V-64-12, University of Passau, Faculty of Business and Economics.
    7. 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.
    8. Grundmann, Susanna & Giamattei, Marcus & Graf Lambsdorff, Johann, 2020. "On the downward rigidity of wages: Evidence from an experimental labour market with monetary neutrality," Passauer Diskussionspapiere, Volkswirtschaftliche Reihe V-80-20, University of Passau, Faculty of Business and Economics.
    9. Alekseev, Aleksandr & Charness, Gary & Gneezy, Uri, 2017. "Experimental methods: When and why contextual instructions are important," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 134(C), pages 48-59.
    10. Esther Pittroff, 2016. "Whistle-blowing regulation in different corporate governance systems: an analysis of the regulation approaches from the view of path dependence theory," Journal of Management & Governance, Springer;Accademia Italiana di Economia Aziendale (AIDEA), vol. 20(4), pages 703-727, December.
    11. Frank Björn & Li Sha & Bühren Christoph & Qin Haiying, 2015. "Group Decision Making in a Corruption Experiment: China and Germany Compared," Journal of Economics and Statistics (Jahrbuecher fuer Nationaloekonomie und Statistik), De Gruyter, vol. 235(2), pages 207-227, April.
    12. Schubert, Manuel, 2012. "Deeds rather than omissions: How intended consequences provoke negative reciprocity," Passauer Diskussionspapiere, Volkswirtschaftliche Reihe V-65-12, University of Passau, Faculty of Business and Economics.
    13. Murray, Cameron K. & Frijters, Paul & Vorster, Melissa, 2017. "The back-scratching game," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 142(C), pages 494-508.
    14. Murray, Cameron K. & Frijters, Paul & Vorster, Melissa, 2015. "Give and You Shall Receive: The Emergence of Welfare-Reducing Reciprocity," IZA Discussion Papers 9010, Institute of Labor Economics (IZA).
    15. Olivier Armantier & Amadou Boly, 2014. "On the effects of incentive framing on bribery: evidence from an experiment in Burkina Faso," Economics of Governance, Springer, vol. 15(1), pages 1-15, February.
    16. Fahr, René & Djawadi, Behnud Mir, 2012. "The impact of risk perception and risk attitudes on corrupt behavior: Evidence from a petty corruption experiment," VfS Annual Conference 2012 (Goettingen): New Approaches and Challenges for the Labor Market of the 21st Century 62022, Verein für Socialpolitik / German Economic Association.
    17. Carlos Moreno‐Jaimes, 2022. "Indulgent citizens: Bribery in Mexico's bureaucratic procedures," Public Administration & Development, Blackwell Publishing, vol. 42(3), pages 190-208, August.
    18. Johann Graf Lambsdorff, 2011. "Economic Approaches to Anticorruption," ifo DICE Report, ifo Institute - Leibniz Institute for Economic Research at the University of Munich, vol. 9(2), pages 25-30, 07.
    19. Dennis Schoeneborn & Fabian Homberg, 2018. "Goffman’s Return to Las Vegas: Studying Corruption as Social Interaction," Journal of Business Ethics, Springer, vol. 151(1), pages 37-54, August.
    20. Detkova, Polina & Tkachenko, Andrey & Yakovlev, Andrei, 2021. "Gender heterogeneity of bureaucrats in attitude to corruption: Evidence from list experiment," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 189(C), pages 217-233.

    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. Lambsdorff, Johann Graf & Frank, Björn, 2010. "Bribing versus gift-giving - An experiment," Journal of Economic Psychology, Elsevier, vol. 31(3), pages 347-357, June.
    2. Graf Lambsdorff, Johann & Frank, Björn, 2007. "Corrupt reciprocity: An experiment," Passauer Diskussionspapiere, Volkswirtschaftliche Reihe V-51-07, University of Passau, Faculty of Business and Economics.
    3. Armantier, Olivier & Boly, Amadou, 2011. "A controlled field experiment on corruption," European Economic Review, Elsevier, vol. 55(8), pages 1072-1082.
    4. Nina Bobkova & Henrik Egbert, 2012. "Corruption Investigated in the Lab: A Survey of the Experimental Literature," International Journal of Finance, Insurance and Risk Management, International Journal of Finance, Insurance and Risk Management, vol. 2(4), pages 337-337.
    5. Alice Guerra & Tatyana Zhuravleva, 2022. "Do women always behave as corruption cleaners?," Public Choice, Springer, vol. 191(1), pages 173-192, April.
    6. Fahr, René & Djawadi, Behnud Mir, 2012. "The impact of risk perception and risk attitudes on corrupt behavior: Evidence from a petty corruption experiment," VfS Annual Conference 2012 (Goettingen): New Approaches and Challenges for the Labor Market of the 21st Century 62022, Verein für Socialpolitik / German Economic Association.
    7. M. Fernanda Rivas, 2013. "An Experiment On Corruption And Gender," Bulletin of Economic Research, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 65(1), pages 10-42, January.
    8. 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.
    9. Frank Björn & Li Sha & Bühren Christoph & Qin Haiying, 2015. "Group Decision Making in a Corruption Experiment: China and Germany Compared," Journal of Economics and Statistics (Jahrbuecher fuer Nationaloekonomie und Statistik), De Gruyter, vol. 235(2), pages 207-227, April.
    10. 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.
    11. Olivier Armantier & Amadou Boly, 2013. "Comparing Corruption in the Laboratory and in the Field in Burkina Faso and in Canada," Economic Journal, Royal Economic Society, vol. 123(12), pages 1168-1187, December.
    12. Björn Frank & Johann Graf Lambsdorff & Frédéric Boehm, 2011. "Gender and Corruption: Lessons from Laboratory Corruption Experiments," The European Journal of Development Research, Palgrave Macmillan;European Association of Development Research and Training Institutes (EADI), vol. 23(1), pages 59-71, February.
    13. Murray, Cameron K. & Frijters, Paul & Vorster, Melissa, 2017. "The back-scratching game," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 142(C), pages 494-508.
    14. Boly, Amadou & Gillanders, Robert, 2018. "Anti-corruption policy making, discretionary power and institutional quality: An experimental analysis," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 152(C), pages 314-327.
    15. Christoph Engel & Sebastian Goerg & Gaoneng Yu, 2012. "Symmetric vs. Asymmetric Punishment Regimes for Bribery," Discussion Paper Series of the Max Planck Institute for Research on Collective Goods 2012_01, Max Planck Institute for Research on Collective Goods, revised May 2013.
    16. Murray, Cameron K. & Frijters, Paul & Vorster, Melissa, 2015. "Give and You Shall Receive: The Emergence of Welfare-Reducing Reciprocity," IZA Discussion Papers 9010, Institute of Labor Economics (IZA).
    17. Abbink, Klaus & Dasgupta, Utteeyo & Gangadharan, Lata & Jain, Tarun, 2014. "Letting the briber go free: An experiment on mitigating harassment bribes," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 111(C), pages 17-28.
    18. 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.
    19. Christoph Engel, 2016. "Experimental Criminal Law. A Survey of Contributions from Law, Economics and Criminology," Discussion Paper Series of the Max Planck Institute for Research on Collective Goods 2016_07, Max Planck Institute for Research on Collective Goods.
    20. Olivier Armantier & Amadou Boly, 2014. "On the effects of incentive framing on bribery: evidence from an experiment in Burkina Faso," Economics of Governance, Springer, vol. 15(1), pages 1-15, February.

    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:eee:irlaec:v:31:y:2011:i:2:p:116-125. 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: Catherine Liu (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.elsevier.com/locate/irle .

    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.