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Corruption is a phenomenon that involves moral components. Despite the general agreement about the involvement of a moral transgression in the characterization of corruption, it has been difficult to find clear evidence of the implication of the participant's morality in their choices in bribery games. To signal the presence of norms, researchers have relied on negative externalities, punishment and frames, but they have yielded mixed or null results. In a bribery game framed in a neutral way Abbink, Irlenbusch and Renner (2002) showed that the participants were sensitive to the possibility of receiving sanctions, but not to produce negative externalities on the other participants in the session. The insensitivity to increasing degrees of externalities was also the result obtained by Barr and Serra (2009) in their neutral version of a single round bribery game. According to these results, games with abstract or neutral frames do not seem to have the aforementioned moral dimension, which questions their validity as instruments to study corruption. This study searched for evidence of a moral component in a bribery game. The experiment relied on two independent groups of participants (N=106) who played the game either framed in neutral terms or with options labeled with relevant semantic content (for example, offer a corrupt deal). In addition, selfish monetary incentives in the bribery game were increased across within-subject conditions, whereas the payoffs for making no transaction or for playing the Trust Game remained fixed. Finally, to assess the moral connotation of decision-making scenarios, participants were asked to complete (post-decision) a Machiavellian scale, which has been previously associated with different aspects of moral decision-making. The experiment managed to identify a robust frame effect for both Players A and B. Results showed that both potential bribers and potential bribees were significantly less prone to choose the corrupt transaction in the loaded frame than in the abstract frame. In addition, the tendency for corruption increased as the selfish monetary incentives involved in the corrupt transaction increased across conditions. Moreover, responses to the game showed individual differences in the level of Machiavellianism, as high Machiavellian scores were directly associated with corrupt offers, though only in the loaded frame. The data also suggests that the present game managed to capture the expression of pro-social preferences (the idea of social preferences is that individuals evaluate an outcome not only on the basis of its consequences for themselves, but also based on consequences to others). This was evident in the fact that, in general, participants avoided the option that generated negative externalities when there was an option without externalities that was equivalent in terms of personal gain. In addition, possible ways of improving the sensitivity of the bribery game to variables expected to be associated with corruptibility were presented. These suggestions could be followed in future studies. The discussion draws attention to potential practical implications of present findings, which suggest that targeting socially undesired actions using labels with morally negative nuances could be an effective mean to discourage people from choosing them. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Some authors conceive corruption as the misuse or abuse of public power for private benefit. Despite not being fall agreement about the conceptual definition of the term, there is consensus that corruption is a widespread welfare-reducing phenomenon affecting institutions all over the world (Rose-Ackerman, 2006). The study of corruption (causes, consequences, and effective means of deterrence) is difficult because of the usually secret nature of the relationships involved. Despite the progress made in cross-country econometric analysis of corruption, on the level of the determinants of behaviour there is still lack of reliable knowledge about the factors that affect people's corruptibility or the institutional features that affect the incidence of corruption (Abbink, 2006). The new field of experimental studies of corruption has recently emerged in an attempt to complement more traditional studies of corruption. In this paper, we first present a brief review of some of the most significant studies in this nascent area, in especial, we focus on introducing the methodology and main results of bribery experiments. In effect, although corruption is a phenomenon that can come in a variety of forms, the offer and acceptance of bribes has been the main focus of interest of this new experimental area. One of the simples ways in which bribery has been modeled in an experiment has been allowing couples of participants to play a Trust Game that can have negative consequences on the other couples (or on passive third parties, depending on the experiment; Abbink et al., 2002; Barr & Serra, 2009; Cameron et al., 2009). Negative externalities happen when the monetary transfer from the first to the second player (the bribe) is reciprocated by the second player choosing an option that favors the first player but harms others. Researchers have also experimentally implemented the possibility of a monetary punishment when the second player chooses the option with negative externalities (Abbink et al., 2002; Cameron et al., 2009). There are two goals that this new area of research pursues. First, researchers try to find out the micro-determinants of corrupt behavior. Second, researchers try to test the efficacy of different anti-corruption policies. One of the main problems with experimental studies of corruption is their external validity, that is, the extent to which experimental results can be extrapolated to understand and combat corruption in real life. The second goal of this article is to discuss the external validity issue in experimental studies of corruption from particular examples from bribery studies. We mention two relevant aspects to assess the external validity of studies: on one hand, generalization among different populations, in which the idea is to evaluate the extent to which the same results persist when populations differ between experiments; on the other hand, situational generalization, in which the idea is to evaluate if results persist when the situation or the context varies. It has been argued (e.g., Levit & List, 2007) that the artificial features of the experimental setup (such as the use of abstract language, the detailed characterization of the corrupt transaction and the scrutiny of participants' actions by researchers) make the extrapolation inference very problematic. We conclude that, although some results seem promissory (especially, very similar findings between laboratory and field experiments; Armantier & Boly, 2011), it seems recommendable to keep a cautious attitude toward the generalization of laboratory findings because there is not enough data on this field yet. Consequently, we stress that the problem of generalization can be approached empirically, and that it is necessary to have more studies which aim at evaluating the external validity of experiments in an area which pretends to be relevant to applied issues. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]