IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/bla/jpbect/v18y2016i6p831-856.html

Asymmetric Punishment as an Instrument of Corruption Control

Author

Listed:
  • KARNA BASU
  • KAUSHIK BASU
  • TITO CORDELLA

Abstract

The control of bribery is a policy objective in many developing countries. It has been argued that asymmetric punishments could reduce bribery by incentivizing whistle-blowing. This paper investigates the role played by asymmetric punishment in a setting where bribe size is determined by Nash bargaining, detection is costly, and detection rates are set endogenously. First, when detection rates are fixed, the symmetry properties of punishment are irrelevant to bribery. Bribery disappears if expected penalties are sufficiently high; otherwise, bribe sizes rise as expected penalties rise. Second, when detection rates are determined by the bribe-giver, a switch from symmetric to asymmetric punishment either eliminates bribery or allows it to persist with larger bribe sizes. Furthermore, when bribery persists, multiple bribe sizes could survive in equilibrium. The paper derives parameter values under which each of these outcomes occurs and discusses how these could be interpreted in the context of existing institutions.
(This abstract was borrowed from another version of this item.)

Suggested Citation

  • Karna Basu & Kaushik Basu & Tito Cordella, 2016. "Asymmetric Punishment as an Instrument of Corruption Control," Journal of Public Economic Theory, Association for Public Economic Theory, vol. 18(6), pages 831-856, December.
    • Handle: RePEc:bla:jpbect:v:18:y:2016:i:6:p:831-856
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1111/jpet.2016.18.issue-6
    Download Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to look for a different version below or

    for a different version of it.

    Other versions of this item:

    Citations

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


    Cited by:

    1. Jandhyala, Srividya & Oliveira, Fernando S., 2021. "The role of international anti-corruption regulations in promoting socially responsible practices," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 190(C), pages 15-32.
    2. Roberto Burguet & Juan José Ganuza & José Garcia Montalvo, 2016. "The microeconomics of corruption. A review of thirty years of research," Economics Working Papers 1525, Department of Economics and Business, Universitat Pompeu Fabra.
    3. Perrotta Berlin, Maria & Spagnolo, Giancarlo & Qin, Bei, 2015. "Leniency, Asymmetric Punishment and Corruption: Evidence from China," SITE Working Paper Series 34, Stockholm School of Economics, Stockholm Institute of Transition Economics, revised 25 May 2017.
    4. Gamba, Astrid & Immordino, Giovanni & Piccolo, Salvatore, 2018. "Corruption, organized crime and the bright side of subversion of law," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 159(C), pages 79-88.
    5. Avinash K. Dixit, 2015. "How Business Community Institutions Can Help Fight Corruption," The World Bank Economic Review, World Bank, vol. 29(suppl_1), pages 25-47.
    6. Chiu Yu Ko & Bo Shen & Xuyao Zhang, 2023. "Can corruption encourage clean technology transfer?," Journal of Public Economic Theory, Association for Public Economic Theory, vol. 25(3), pages 459-492, June.
    7. Adriana Gama & Isabelle Maret & Virginie Masson, 2019. "Endogenous heterogeneity in duopoly with deterministic one-way spillovers," Annals of Finance, Springer, vol. 15(1), pages 103-123, March.
    8. Benjamin Florian Siggelkow & Jan Trockel & Oliver Dieterle, 2018. "An inspection game of internal audit and the influence of whistle-blowing," Journal of Business Economics, Springer, vol. 88(7), pages 883-914, September.
    9. J. Atsu Amegashie, 2016. "The Welfare Effects of Consumers' Reports of Bribery," Journal of Economics & Management Strategy, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 25(2), pages 516-534, April.
    10. Hu, Lin & Oak, Mandar, 2023. "Intermediated corruption under asymmetric punishment," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 215(C), pages 490-499.
    11. Dimant, Eugen & Deutscher, Christian, 2014. "The Economics of Corruption in Sports – The Special Case of Doping," MPRA Paper 60566, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    12. Chanchal Pramanik, 2022. "A study on bribery networks with a focus on harassment bribery and ways to control corruption," Papers 2201.02804, arXiv.org.
    13. Sergey V. Popov, 2016. "On Basu's Proposal: Fines Affect Bribes," Economics Working Papers 16-04, Queen's Management School, Queen's University Belfast.
    14. Dhammika Dharmapala & Vikramaditya Khanna, 2017. "Stock Market Reactions to India's 2016 Demonetization: Implications for Tax Evasion, Corruption, and Financial Constraints," CESifo Working Paper Series 6707, CESifo.
    15. Maurizio Caserta & Livio Ferrante & Francesco Reito, 2022. "Bribes and Bureaucracy Size: The Strategy of Watering Down Corruption," Economica, London School of Economics and Political Science, vol. 89(353), pages 191-213, January.
    16. Dhammika Dharmapala & Vikramaditya S. Khanna, 2019. "Stock Market Reactions to India's 2016 Demonetization," Journal of Empirical Legal Studies, John Wiley & Sons, vol. 16(2), pages 281-317, June.
    17. Jun Hu, 2021. "Asymmetric punishment, Leniency and Harassment Bribes in China: a selective survey," Working Papers hal-03119491, HAL.
    18. Astrid Gamba & Giovanni Immordino & Salvatore Piccolo, 2016. "Organized Crime and the Bright Side of Subversion of Law," DISCE - Working Papers del Dipartimento di Economia e Finanza def039, Università Cattolica del Sacro Cuore, Dipartimenti e Istituti di Scienze Economiche (DISCE).
    19. Dasgupta, Utteeyo & Radoniqi, Fatos, 2023. "Republic of beliefs: An experimental investigation✰," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 214(C), pages 30-43.
    20. Dmitriy Knyazev, 2023. "How to fight corruption: Carrots and sticks," Economic Inquiry, Western Economic Association International, vol. 61(2), pages 413-429, April.
    21. Dasgupta, Utteeyo & Radoniqi, Fatos, 2021. "Republic of Beliefs: An Experimental Investigation," IZA Discussion Papers 14130, IZA Network @ LISER.
    22. Basu,Kaushik, 2015. "The republic of beliefs : a new approach to ?law and economics?," Policy Research Working Paper Series 7259, The World Bank.
    23. Mishra, Ajit & Samuel, Andrew, 2024. "Bribery and temptation: More red tape or more discretion?," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 224(C), pages 641-655.
    24. Lin Hu & Mandar Oak, 2023. "Can asymmetric punishment deter endogenous bribery," Journal of Economics & Management Strategy, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 32(1), pages 3-21, January.
    25. Nhan Buu Phan & Shino Takayama, 2023. "A Model of Corruption and Heterogeneous Productivity: A Theoretical Approach," Discussion Papers Series 660, School of Economics, University of Queensland, Australia.

    More about this item

    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:bla:jpbect:v:18:y:2016:i:6:p:831-856. 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.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using 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 Content Delivery (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/apettea.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.