Disentangling the effect of norms and externalities in a bribery game

CARLOS MAXIMILIANO SENCI; HIPÓLITO HASRUN; RODRIGO MORO; FREIDIN ESTEBAN

Oslo

Conferencia; XI Nordic Conference on Behavioral and Experimental Economics; 2016

BI Norwegian Business School

Corruption typically involves transgression of norms (Rose-Ackerman, 2006). However, experiments on corruption have been criticized on the basis of their lack of an adequate moral frame, perhaps due to their artificial nature (Levitt and List, 2007), which may elicit from subjects a different type of behavior of the one intended by the experimenter. In fact, it has been found only weak evidence of the effect of a moral frame (Abbink and Hennig-Schmidt, 2005; Barr and Serra, 2009). The central argument of our study is that experimental designs have failed to adequately account for moral costs that are at play in un-ethical behavior in the lab because they have overlooked social norms governing bribery situations. Norms are supposed to be a key factor influencing people?s behavior (Coleman, 1990; Cialdini & Trost, 1998; Bicchieri, 2006; Lopez-Perez, 2008). Typical bribery situations involve public authorities and private citizens. In the interaction it is almost generally the case that citizens have a well-defined normative status regarding whether they are entitled to a right (they may be asked to pay a fee, or to fulfill an application, etc.) or whether they are ?at fault?. Authorities must decide taking into account citizens? normative statuses. Indeed, the social norm not only dictates whether the briber is at fault, but also imposes a duty to the Public Official. Previous studies have focused on the existence of reciprocity between briber and PO, modeling a trust game with externalities. However, the fact bribery entails an act that goes against an explicit norm or rule has been overlooked in previous studies. This omission affects the similarity between the model and the phenomenon intended to be mirrored in a crucial aspect of corruption, namely, norm violation. The objective of this study is to evaluate whether the normative status of the action has an influence on subjects? willingness to offer or accept bribes. By modeling the normative status of the agents involved in the situation we pretend to enhance the experiment?s ecological validity. We expected higher offers and a higher rate of acceptance in the condition in which citizens have not acquired the right to the bonus. This could shed light on the role of social norms in bribery and it could eventually lead to enhance experiments? ecological validity.