It is generally considered that more competition might help curb corruption, as rents, which motivate corrupt agreements, are decreasing in the degree of competition. This paper proposes a framework to analyze the relationship between corruption and competition. It studies the optimal incentive scheme for potentially corrupt officials in charge of inspecting firms that compete in the product market. Given that bribe-taking is sometimes tolerated in equilibrium, for specific values of the externality that motivated regulatory intervention, nonmonotonic effects arise and more competition may lead to an increase in corruption. Moreover, it is shown that in this context competition is always welfare improving, even though it might lead to more corruption.
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Paper provided by Edinburgh School of Economics, University of Edinburgh in its series ESE Discussion Papers with number
131.
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References listed on IDEAS Please report citation or reference errors to , or , if you are the registered author of the cited work, log in to your RePEc Author Service profile, click on "citations" and make appropriate adjustments.:
Shleifer, Andrei & Vishny, Robert W, 1993.
"Corruption,"
The Quarterly Journal of Economics,
MIT Press, vol. 108(3), pages 599-617, August.
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Andrei Shleifer & Robert W. Vishny, 1993.
"Corruption,"
NBER Working Papers
4372, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
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