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The integrity of electronic voting systems is critical in safeguarding the democratic process worldwide. This study addresses the twin challenges of bribery and coercion that undermine most existing electronic voting systems. Recognizing the limitations of current security measures, which fail to protect voter autonomy even after the disclosure of voting secrets, we propose an innovative level-five secure e-voting system. By integrating an additional setup phase, our system maintains voter volition, ensuring security even when key secrets are compromised. Utilizing cryptographic techniques, blind signatures, and subliminal channels in conjunction with smart card PIN mechanisms, our approach not only bolsters system security but also enhances its potential for widespread adoption. This work underscores the importance of advanced cryptographic methods in developing coercion-resistant electronic voting systems that prioritize voter privacy and choice. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Paying bribes to access public services is a common form of corruption faced by citizens worldwide. A standard policy recommendation to address this problem is to create secure channels and encourage citizens to report bribery to authorities. Bribery reporting tools aim to decrease the incidence of bribery, but they could also serve to bolster anti-corruption commitment. Can bribery reporting channels also inspire citizens to fight corruption? This paper tests the claim that institutional responsiveness to bribery reporting triggers a positive feedback mechanism. The positive feedback mechanism refers to the proposition that advertising successful cases of institutional responsiveness not only persuades citizens of institutional commitment to fighting corruption but also inspires them to uptake various anti-corruption activities. The empirical strategy relies on Afrobarometer survey data from 12 countries, specifically focusing on individuals reporting bribery incidents who also answer a survey question about the subsequent actions taken by authorities. The paper assesses the persuasion effect by examining whether institutional responsiveness correlates with more positive perceptions of public institutions. Additionally, the paper assesses the inspiration effect by investigating whether this responsiveness is associated with citizens' willingness to take part in anti-corruption activities. The findings show that, even though those who have observed responsiveness to bribery reporting tend to evaluate public institutions more positively, they do not seem more willing to engage against corruption than those who do not observe responsiveness. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The past decade witnessed a surge in anti-corruption activities in post-Soviet oil-dependent countries. Despite the scale of the anti-corruption measures, and their political implications, the extant literature paid limited attention to the comparison of these campaigns, including differences in their motivations, functions, objectives, and targets. Aiming to fill this research gap, this study employs a mixed-methods research design that combines fixed-effects panel data analysis with a paired-case qualitative analysis of Russia and Kazakhstan. I argue that anti-corruption policies are the result of either economic necessity or the desire to secure power through buttressing regime legitimacy. Consequently, a significant drop in oil price due to the COVID-19 crisis is likely to result in a major anti-corruption campaign targeting high-level officials in oil-rich countries. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We investigate the impact of CEO career horizon on corporate bribery. Based upon the research on time horizon of corporate investments, we argue that bribery may be implemented as an investment in strategic relationships with long-term motivations in emerging markets and, for that matter, CEOs with longer career horizons rather than shorter career horizons are more likely to make bribery investments. Using a sample of 2,914 Chinese listed companies from 2010 to 2018, we find support for the argument. The finding challenges the long-held assumption that short-term oriented CEOs are prone to paying bribes. Further, we augment the research by expounding upon the way that state ownership moderates the relationship between CEO career horizon and firm bribery investment. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

While there are a relatively large number of studies on the relationship between firm formality and bribery, little is known about how a dynamic business environment affects this relationship. Using longitudinal data collected from biennial surveys of small- and medium-sized firms in Vietnam, this study shows that formal firms are more likely to pay bribes, which are proxied by greasing and rent-seeking bribes, than informal firms in provinces with poor business environments. Nevertheless, when the quality of the local business environment is improved, the formal firms are less likely to commit bribery. They also pay less bribes and have an expectation of paying less bribes in the future. These findings suggest that the focus of anti-corruption strategies should be on improving the quality of the local business environment to support the formal small- and medium-sized firms. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The role which corporate and financial secrecy vehicles play in enabling transnational corruption has justifiably received growing scholarly and policy interest. Less attention, however, has been given to the enabling role played by political secrecy vehicles. Political secrecy vehicles denote arrangements that allow individuals to clandestinely exercise public authority, which is concealed by a formal bureaucratic façade. This article develops analytical categories for deconstructing political secrecy structures and pinpointing the threat they pose to anti-corruption enforcement. These structures and threats are then empirically explored through an investigative case study. The case study plots how shadow political space in Uzbekistan and the simulacra of impartial public administration, was utilised by a kleptocratic syndicate to conceal an international bribery scheme, and then weaponised by the conspirators to successfully frustrate enforcement efforts in Europe. Drawing on key lessons from the case study, proposals are made for how the threats posed by political secrecy structures can be jurisprudentially and practically counteracted. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Given the recent recurring cases of financial crime worldwide, national and international regulators have enacted new regulatory instruments intended to prevent or inhibit unlawful acts by banks and their representatives. These stricter regulations regarding the operations of financial institutions have reinforced the importance of best practices and the role of compliance within banks. Nonetheless, regulations regarding compliance structures and functions are not yet mandatory and give great flexibility to banks to define how they will set their compliance programmes. This research aims to understand how compliance functions have been implemented in the two largest banks in the UK and Brazil as a governance mechanism to fight financial crimes such as bribery and corruption. Document analyses of websites and financial reports of these banks examine disclosures provided by these corporations and shed light on the main drivers influencing their transparency regarding compliance functions, roles and responsibilities and their connections to the bank's operations and profitability goals. This research demonstrates that the implementation and enhancement of compliance functions in UK and Brazilian banks are driven by attempts to respond to regulatory requirements, social demands and as a reputational risk instrument, reflecting different levels of development in each institution. The maturity of these disclosures demonstrates that Brazilian banks present a more reactive attitude, justifying their investments in compliance according to minimum law requirements, while banks in the UK tend to have a more proactive perspective on their compliance initiatives, reinforcing their importance for the bank's competitive advantage and long-term continuity beyond regulatory compliance. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Physical access to public services frequently does not guarantee people's needs will be met — what we term effective access. Such discrepancies result in part from social bargaining: the extent to which citizens can leverage connections with street-level service providers. Survey data from 34 African countries shows citizens with greater social bargaining capacity enjoy greater effective access, in contrast to citizens who pay bribes. Data from 70,000 households in Tanzania further demonstrates that parents with greater social bargaining capacity have more opportunities to interact with school officials — and that their children are more likely to achieve relevant learning outcomes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Sentencing differences can arise from discriminatory sentences and sentence disparities. Only the former has been examined in Malaysia. This study addresses the gap using data on convicted bribe offenders between 2010 and 2021. Results show that while discriminatory sentencing arising from non-legal considerations exists, their effects on fines and imprisonment were not always uniform or in the same direction. Only being male unequivocally disadvantaged the offender. Professionals and whitecollar offenders paid higher fines, government servants and bribe solicitors served longer jail sentences, Malay judges handed out longer jail terms than their non-Malay counterparts, and the year 2021 was characterized by shorter jail terms relative to other periods. In the case of sentencing disparities, all differences are attributable to judicial discretion, exercised correctly or otherwise. Of greater concern, however, is the significant negative association between the severity of penalties imposed (fines and imprisonment) and the amount of corrupt money misappropriated. This seriously undermines the deterrent effect and fairness of the judicial system. Findings also suggest that the conclusion of a previous study that bribery offenders in Malaysia receive preferential treatment based on their social, political, and personal characteristics is not only sweeping but inaccurate and has to be modified. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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Bribery, an illegal conspiracy between two transactional parties, has a wide range of destructive effects on society. From an interpersonal interaction perspective, we explored how Guanxi (interpersonal relationships, including direct and indirect ones) influences individuals, especially government officials' bribe-taking probability, using behavioral experiments and questionnaires. The findings suggested that direct Guanxi promoted individuals' acceptance of bribes (Study 1a), and indirect Guanxi had the same role and effect sizes (Study 1b). However, the mechanisms were slightly different. Government officials were more likely to accept bribes from family members and friends (direct Guanxi) (than strangers) because they had more trust and felt more responsible and obligated to help them (Study 2). However, accepting bribes from those who contacted them through their family or friends (indirect Guanxi) (vs. strangers) was only driven by trust (Study 3). The present study explores the lubricant role of Guanxi in corruption, extends the literature on why bribery occurs from a new perspective, and provides suggestions for fighting corruption. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Firm-level bribery and regulation are two of the many determinants of firm performance. However, most of the existing studies examine the direct and linear effects of bribery and regulation and overlook their indirect effects. Using firm-level data, covering 20,343 firms in 78 developing countries, and employing a threshold model, the effects of firm performance's standard determinants vary based on the bribery and regulation levels. Our findings reveal that the impact of bribery and regulation on firm performance varies significantly depending on corruption and regulation levels. Access to external finance improves firm performance if and only if the firms are exposed to bribes and firm-level regulation is below a given threshold. Furthermore, exports boost the performance of the firms that are exposed to more bribery and spend more time with regulation than those that face lower levels of regulation and bribery. While bribery harms firm performance, our findings reveal that spending time with regulation could improve firm performance if firms are exposed to low levels of bribery. Our findings confirm the 'sand the wheels' hypothesis and limiting firm-level bribery improves firm performance. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper, we study a division between market corruption—impersonal bribery—and network corruption that operates through social connections. We provide a thorough theoretical discussion of this division, compare it with other categorizations of corruption, and also demonstrate differences between market and network corruption existing in practice. Using data from the World Economic Forum in the period from 2007 to 2016 we measure market and network corruption across about 150 countries all over the globe and show that network corruption is more related to countries' cultural backgrounds and more harmful to investments than market corruption. Overall, our paper argues that the market-network dimension, unfairly abandoned in the literature, may be useful for better understanding of such a complex phenomenon as corruption. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

When do citizens tolerate corrupt, but competent, politicians? This paper formally establishes conditions under which citizens trade off corruption for competence. First, the regime has to be sufficiently democratic such that a corrupt politician has to be acceptable to a large enough coalition of citizens in order to stay in power. Second, institutions are such that the politician can more easily obtain rents by taking bribes in exchange for spending revenues on public goods, rather than by stealing the revenues outright: the former case can generate more public goods than the latter. Under these two conditions, competence sustains corruption, and vice-versa. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Numerous studies have pointed out that as the political and economic environment changes, the structures of corruption in China are constantly evolving. Specifically, the transaction-type corruption has surged and the auto-corruption (non-transactional administrative corruption) has receded. As such, what kind of structural characteristics does China's corruption types present today? What factors can help us explain the variances of these structural characteristics? Drawn on the quantitative analysis of a novel dataset, this study found that: in terms of personal traits, the gender of the defendant and urban–rural residence have a significant impact on the type of corruption; in the macro-institutional environment, the development of private economy and the size of the government have opposite effects on the composition of the corruption type. Privatization increases the probability of transaction-type corruption. The size of the government increases the probability of auto-corruption. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The study investigated the relationship between family psychological wealth, peer pressure, and corruption tendencies of adolescent Senior Secondary Two (SS2) students in Calabar Metropolis of Cross River State, Nigeria. The influence of gender on the corruption tendencies of these adolescent students was also investigated. The sample was made up of 814 respondents from 22 public and private secondary schools in Calabar Metropolis. A questionnaire with the following title was the tool used to gather the data: "Family Psychological Wealth, Peer Pressure and Corruption Tendencies Questionnaire" (FPWPPCTQ). This was constructed by the researchers and validated by Educational Psychologists and experts in Test, Measurement, and Evaluation. The reliability coefficient obtained by using the Cronbach reliability coefficient method was 0.76. Three hypotheses were formulated to direct the study and were tested with the aid of the Mann–Whitney U-test and Spearman's rank correlation. The outcome revealed a significant difference between the corruption tendencies of male and female students with male students showing a greater tendency towards corruption. A significant negative relationship was obtained between family psychological wealth and corruption tendencies among adolescent SS2 students in Calabar Metropolis. Peer pressure and students' corruption tendencies were found to be significantly and positively correlated. Family psychological wealth could, therefore, be explored to check Nigeria's endemic corruption which persists despite the establishment of anti-corruption institutions. Non-governmental organizations should be encouraged to empower the boy child through counselling, mentorship, and educational assistance to reduce their tendency to corruption. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Corruption in People's Republic of China (PRC) has worsened and become widespread and deeply rooted at all levels of the government for decades. Since President Xi Jinping came to power, a new anti-corruption campaign has been waged against both 'tigers and flies', and many 'big tigers' have been brought down. The new campaign raises important questions about the efficacy of institutional management and regulations to control corruption. Yet, empirical studies on judicial trials and sentencing of corrupt officials in China are sparse. Based on a random sample of three corruption crimes (misappropriation of public funds, embezzlement, and bribe-taking) adjudicated in 2016, this study empirically examines potential impact of one's official rank on both judicial processing and sentencing. The results showed that one's official rank makes potential differences in embezzlement and bribe-taking. In general, higher official rankers are associated with prolonged judicial processing and harsher punishment, which lends support to an exemplary model official theory. This study shed significant light to our understanding of China's judicial campaign against corruption offenders. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The present research examined the effect of personal control on bribery intention and the mediating role of reciprocity beliefs in this relationship. In Study 1, we used questionnaires to investigate the correlational relationships among personal control, reciprocity beliefs, and bribery intention, and the results provided primary evidence for the mediated model. In Study 2, using a measurement-of-mediation design, we manipulated personal control to explore its effects on reciprocity beliefs and bribery intention. In Study 3, by adopting a moderation-of-process design, we examined whether increased levels of reciprocity beliefs weakened the relationship between personal control and bribery intention. Overall, these three studies showed that a decreased level of personal control resulted in stronger reciprocity beliefs, in turn promoting bribery intention. The results indicated that enhancing the sense of personal control and weakening reciprocal beliefs might be potential approaches to decrease bribery. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper analyzes the problem of a principal (she) designing a contract for an agent (he) to form a short-lived partnership to exploit an asset before reselling, as in asset flipping. The agent possesses higher expertise than the principal in the sense that he can form a more-accurate assessment of the resale value of the asset before negotiating the dissolution of the partnership. By dissolving the partnership through a Texas shootout with the agent as proposer, the principal can "neutralize" her partner's informational advantage and have him disclose the resale value for free. Thus, in the optimal contract, the agent's superior expertise does not distort the structure of the partnership (i.e., the allocation of shares). The partners attain a higher aggregate surplus ex-ante if the principal commits to giving the asset away to the agent upon dissolving the partnership: She earns a lower revenue but lets all types of the agent enjoy a higher surplus. Thus, at the ex-ante stage, the agent could "bribe" the principal to implement this alternative. However, the additional surplus for lower types is insufficient to compensate the principal, so this higher ex-ante aggregate surplus is unattainable at the interim stage. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Extant research concludes that family firms are less likely to bribe due to reputation concerns. However, such conclusions are, to a certain extent, inconsistent with the intuition and observation that some family firms can be aggressive bribers. This study employs a restricted-extended framework of socioemotional wealth model to reconcile this inconsistency. We propose family management, on the one hand, results in reputation preservation willingness; while on the other hand, results in an abuse of trust between family members and superior ability to hide bribery secrets. Integrating the willingness and ability mechanisms leads to an inverted U-shaped relationship between family management and bribery. Further, family firm political connection and province-level anti-corruption investigation play moderation role on the inverted U-shaped main effect. An empirical analysis of Chinese listed firms from 2006 to 2017 supports our hypotheses. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper we build on the residual control theory and examine the interdependence of countries' institutional environment and firms' nonmarket positions towards firm corruption. Based on World Bank data from emerging economies spanning from 2006 to 2018, we find that the interaction between lower quality market-supporting institutions and firm's weaker positions makes firms more vulnerable to bribery requests, consequently leading to their involvement in bribery. This mediated interaction effect occurs due to the interplay between the demand- and supply-side of corruption, highlighting how firms' relative nonmarket positions and the institutional context jointly shape the firms' incentive for bribery activities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The previous literature has extensively examined the effect of firm-level bribery on firm performance but not through on-the-job training. This paper investigates the impact of paying bribes on the firm's investment decisions in on-the-job training and offers mediating implications of corruption on firm performance. We empirically examine the relationship between bribery and on-the-job training using firm-level data from the World Bank Enterprise Surveys consisting of a sample of 94 developing countries with 20,601 firms. The findings show that bribery and on-the-job training intensity affects real annual sales growth rates negatively and positively, respectively. Furthermore, firms exposed to more bribery reduce their on-the-job training intensity. The results are robust to the different classifications of the firm's size, different subsamples, and controls for the endogeneity of the on-the-job training and bribery. Plain English Summary: Can bribery be an obstacle for the firm's investment in on-the-job training and, therefore, its performance? When firms are exposed to higher costs due to bribery, they may be forced to shift their resources from efficient uses. For instance, training is one way of using the resources efficiently as it will increase labor productivity, and, therefore, decrease average production costs. Analyzing a large firm-level data, we find that if firms are exposed to more bribery, they tend to offer lower training to their employees, and their performance worsens. Thus, the main policy implication of this paper is that governments should provide some types of subsidies for the provision of on-the-job training. Improving firm performance through training would also improve the country's prosperity, which in turn could eliminate corruption. Henceforth, the vicious cycle between bribery, education, and development could be broken down. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The question as to whether women are less corrupt than men has been the focal point of an intense and ongoing debate. While some studies show that women are more risk-averse than men—and, as a result, less likely to engage in corruption—others point to the contrary. This study aims to answer two key questions: (1) are women more or less likely than men to engage in bribery? And (2) are women more or less likely than men to believe that one can report corruption without retaliation? Our results show that, compared to men, women are less likely to offer bribes, and they are also less likely to believe that one can report corruption without retaliation. Since women are less likely to engage in bribery, it is recommended that women's representation in positions of power be increased. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

It is virtually impossible to accurately measure employee theft across the casino industry using official statistics. In this paper, we use the self-report method for measuring crime to (a) estimate the prevalence, incidence, seriousness, and versatility of occupational offending in casinos in Macau, China—the largest casino gambling location in the world; and (b) identify characteristics which correlate with that offending. One in seven employees in our sample (14%; 38 out of 281) reported engaging in at least one of six offenses (theft in the workplace, falsification of documents, computer fraud, bribe offering, bribe accepting, and white-collar exploitation) in the 12 months prior to their survey response. The great majority of active offenders specialized in crime type: 61% of the active offenders in our sample (23 out of 38) committed just one of the six occupational crimes. Criminal "specialization" notwithstanding, offenders committed their crimes relatively frequently; occupational crimes were particularly costly to casinos in the long run; and these offenses varied in their severity and extent depending on crime type. Demographic characteristics of casino employees—in particular, male gender, occupational position, work schedule, and work-related experience—were associated with whether an employee engaged in workplace crime. Regarding psychological and lifestyle characteristics of employees, only financial pressure and gambling behavior were significantly related to occupational offending. Given that casinos are subject to high levels of surveillance relative to other places of employment, criminal motivation, and not just opportunity, could matter in terms of crimes committed by workers in the gaming industry. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The online version of the original article can be found at https://doi.org/10.1007/s10611-023-10137-3.Correction to: Crime, Law and Social Change (2024)https://doi.org/10.1007/s10611-023-10137-3In this article the caption to Fig. 1 was incorrect. It should have been read as "Sample selection using survey questions" and not "Note: This is mandatory. Please provide".The original article has been corrected.Publisher's NoteSpringer Nature remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations.By Letícia BarbabelaReported by Author [Extracted from the article]

Corruption research in economics has a long history. Seminal early articles, and older findings contrast with newer developments which have as yet not been measured empirically; in particular the link between corruption and innovating activities suffers from multiple results, on both a national country and company or firm level. This paper examines the corruption-innovation link in transition and emerging countries as the decision to corrupt, and the ability to innovate may not be independent. An endogenous switching regression model is advocated as a suitably methodological way of modeling the joint determination of a firm's innovation and possible bribes as it implies not only a selection between corrupted and non-corrupted firms, but also heterogeneous effects on innovative activities. The paper shows that, when the selection effect is adequately considered, different firms' strategies arise. In particular, the treatment effect of corruption on innovation is positive for corrupting firms and negative for non-corrupting firms. Corrupting firms appear rational because paying bribes increases their innovative activities. However, non-corrupting firms also appear rational because in the presence of bribes, their innovating activities would be fewer. Thus, when the selection effect is adequately considered, the effects of so-called "greasing-and-sanding-the-wheels" can co-exist. Finally, the role of competition is also considered. Building on these results, future research can move forward to re-examine economic outcomes such as the productivity or the economic impact of corruption, in the presence (or absence) of selection processes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this article, we study firm-level determinants of corruption using a sample of 164,000 companies from 144 countries for the 2005–2020 period. We analyze two variables related to corruption: the perception of corruption as an obstacle to doing business using an ordinal logit model and actual bribe tax payments using a fractional logit model. Controlling for other factors, both sets of our empirical results show that the extent of corruption is related to the time spent dealing with regulations and inspections. We argue that firms which spend more time dealing with administrative procedures have a greater perception of corruption and are forced to make significantly higher bribe payments. Therefore, in a successful fight against corruption, it is essential to simplify administrative procedures by reducing their number and eliminating direct contacts between firms and officials. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Studies of bribery have been heavily influenced by the cost/benefit calculation, leaving social relationship of the involved parties under-explored. We propose the norm of reciprocity as a complement theoretical lens to explain bribery exchanges and explore different types of obligation that induce bribery. Based on qualitative data from a sample of government officials in Vietnam, we found that many bribery exchanges are governed by the norm of reciprocity, i.e., obligation-based bribery. In these obligation-based bribery exchanges, the parties extend and return illegal favors based on their senses of obligation to each other, in adjacent to cost/benefit calculation. We also uncovered two types of obligation, including pragmatic and moral, and found that these types of obligation are developed through different practices. Failure to address this social element of bribery would hinder much of anti-corruption effort. The study suggests that interactions between the norm of reciprocity and wider ethical norms in governing bribery should be further addressed by both researchers and practitioners. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Moral licensing posits that previous moral acts increase the probability of behaving immorally in the future. According to this perspective, rejecting bribes, even because they are too small, would create a kind of "license" for taking (presumably larger) bribes in the future. On the other hand, the desire for consistency in behavior predicts that previous rejection of bribes will increase the probability of rejection for bribes offered in the future. Using a laboratory task modeling the decision to take a bribe, we examined how resisting and succumbing to the temptation to take a bribe affects later bribe-taking. Participants (N = 297) were offered either low bribes first and high bribes later or vice versa. Low bribes were in general rejected more often and the results showed some weak, nonsignificant evidence that bribe-taking may be influenced by the order of the sizes of offered bribes. However, there was no evidence of an increased probability of taking bribes after being offered the low bribes first and thus no evidence in support of the moral licensing effect. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Bribery is a complex and critical issue in higher education (HE), causing severe economic and societal harm. Traditionally, most scholarship on HE corruption has focused on institutional factors in developing countries and insights into the psychological and motivational factors that drive HE bribery on the micro-level mechanisms are virtually non-existent. To close this research gap, this study investigates the connection between study-related burnout and university students' willingness to offer bribes to their lecturers to pass important exams. Conducting a vignette-based quasi-experimental replication study with 624 university students in Germany, Belgium, and the Netherlands we find that university students in three countries differentiate sharply between different shades of bribery and that a majority accept using emotional influence tactics to pass (failed) exams. In contrast, offering a helping hand or money (i.e., darker shades of bribery) to their lecturer was less acceptable. Study-related burnout is associated with a higher likelihood of engaging in these darker shades of bribery and students' commitment to the public interest is but a weak factor in preventing unethical behavior. In summary, this study provides solid empirical evidence that university students are likely to use emotional influence tactics violating both the ethical codes of conduct and the formalized bureaucratic procedures of HE examination, particularly if they suffer from study-related burnout. However, the accelerating effect of burnout on bribery is conditional in that it only holds for darker shades of bribery. HE institutions may benefit from implementing the four-eye principle and from launching awareness campaigns that enable lecturers to better recognize these tactics and engage students in creating a transparent environment for testing, grading, and collaboration that is resistant to bribery. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The study examines one type of breaches of integrity, namely using one's authority in public office for personal gain (Hallak J & Poisson M. Corrupt schools, corrupt universities: what can be done? 2007), in the administration of teachers in Ghana. It was executed using an embedded mixed methods design with a population of 667 teachers employed by the Ghana Education Service (GES). A sample of 270 respondents was chosen by simple random sampling for the study. The questionnaire containing open-ended and closed-ended items was administered to the respondents. Data generated by the close-ended items were analysed using frequencies and percentages and data obtained from the open-ended items were analysed in themes. The study found that integrity breaches were prevalent in GES and occurred under the watch of superior officers in the service. It was more pronounced in teachers' requests for upgrading and promotion, and salary processing. Victims did not report the act because they believed nothing would happen and because they fear victimisation. Integrated Personnel and Payroll Database (IPPD) coordinators and Human Resource Managers at the district and regional levels of GES were found to be the most corrupt officers in the service. It is recommended that character references on GES staff be sought; the processing of salaries, transfer, upgrading, promotion, among others, at the GES offices should be automated; and effective whistleblower hotlines should be instituted. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Judicially supervised negotiated settlements have featured heavily of late in discourse on responses to financial crimes committed by corporations. The United States has recently concluded a series of proceeds of kleptocracy settlements with individuals using processes which, from transparency and accountability perspectives, compare favourably to England's asset recovery practice. This paper seeks to foster a conversation on whether the use of negotiated responses could or should be extended to arrangements with natural persons who are suspected of laundering the proceeds of grand corruption in England. It addresses some reservations that arise where negotiated responses to official corruption are employed and seeks to identify principled and practical justifications for the use of settlements instead of public civil recovery proceedings. It also draws on the US and English experiences in entering into settlements with companies for bribery offences in attempting to identify some of the main pitfalls and benefits implicit in utilising negotiated responses to corruption. The paper concludes by tentatively endorsing as an imperfect but pragmatic option the use of settlements as an alternative to existing asset recovery measures for corruptly-acquired assets. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper aims to model the link between productivity, relocation cost and corruption by applying game theory. Firms sometimes compete with one another through the bribes that they offer authorities in exchange for special privileges. Provinces are also in competition with another to retain and attract investors. The optimization problem identifies what fraction of revenue is optimal for a bribe so that both firms and authorities can optimize their outcomes. We have proven that corruption is the equilibrium outcome. Notably, the bribe rate as a share of revenue should decrease as firms' productivity enhances, especially for those who are able to relocate to other provinces. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

While corruption is commonly understood in behavioral terms, the dominance of political and economic approaches has hindered the integration of relevant psychological insights into the (anti-)corruption mainstream, causing a rift between the examination of social determinants and their assessment within a process of individual decision-making. The present study offers a model that combines moral, social, and political factors to explore the cognitive processes behind corruption tolerance, operationalized here as attitudinal, intended, and behavioral responses to a bribery event. Using data from 1651 survey respondents across Latin America, it empirically tests the impact of key variables over the formation of individual attitude, intention, and behavior, taking into account the conditions and situations in which it arises. The results show that the decision to engage in petty bribery responds significantly and consistently to the individual's tendency toward moral disengagement, and the centrality of their moral identity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We investigate how paying a bribe or refusing a bribe differs between observing others doing this or committing such acts oneself. Study 1 examines how and when observing others paying a bribe or refusing a bribe leads to actions opposing bribery or supporting anti-bribery. The how question is answered by showing that positive and negative emotions mediate such responses; the when question is answered by demonstrating that empathy and the social self-concept constitute personal conditions for regulating such effects. Study 2 scrutinizes how and when paying a bribe or refusing a bribe leads to actions reducing bribery. Here the mediators pride and shame, and the social self-concept again regulates such effects. Actual managers are the respondents in these two field experiments, with 140 men and women in Study 1 and 207 men and women in Study 2. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Despite prosecutors' difficulties in proving corporate bribery, nearly all enforcement actions end with a settlement at the pretrial stage. Compared to court proceedings, settlement-based enforcement provide prosecutors with flexibility to reward offenders' self-reporting and cooperation, and reach quicker conclusions to complex cases. In this article, we explain, such enforcement needs regulation to minimize potentially harmful side-effects. When the difference between a court and settlement sanction exceeds a certain size, the alleged offender accepts a settlement regardless of actual responsibility of misconduct. For the prosecutor, the option of offering a lenient settlement means weaker incentives to ascertain the material facts of the case. Society receives less information about the blameworthy act, little opportunity to evaluate the sanction, and less reason to expect sanctions to deter bribery. We show why such consequences result in under-deterrence of bribery and weaker rule of law. The use of settlement may have a self-escalating effect because the enforcement mode can reduce the predictability of the law, while a defendant's inclination to accept a settlement offer depends on the predictability of the law. Our results suggest that United Kingdom's current escalation of enforcement of corporate bribery laws will lead to a mixture of settlements and court decisions, while in the United States firms will continue to negotiate settlements as if there were no opportunity to have their cases tested in court. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines how bribe payment by enterprises in Vietnam affects employees' working conditions, particularly wage benefits and other non-monetary compensations. We exploit the variation in the interaction of the score for the transparency of the local government in a specific province, the district-sector share of enterprises engaging in bribe payment, and the sector average size of the enterprise owner's social network that are public officers as an exogenous variation in the likelihood of engaging in bribe payment. The results of the analysis reveal that when an enterprise pays bribe, it reduces the wages of its employees by approximately 27.6% (mostly for those within the highest wage bracket). Employees' membership of a trade union, enterprise' performance, capacity for inter-jurisdictional mobility, investment in human capital development, and formality status are likely operative channels of impact. Plain English Summary Enterprises' engagement in bribe payment has negative impacts on the wages of employees. Corruption and bribe payment are endemic in many developing countries and they come at a cost to the broader society. Several studies have been conducted on how corruption impacts the welfare of individuals and households, the productivity, and effective and efficient functioning of firms and government, but we contribute to this debate by considering how bribe payment at the firm level affects employees' welfare. We argue that bribe payment by an enterprise has potential effects on the wages and other non-monetary compensations of their employees. Depending on the size of the bribe and the profit level of the enterprise, bribe payment may reduce or improve an enterprises' cash flow. In an event that the enterprise incurs a cost for paying bribe, it may transfer the cost to its employees by either cutting their wages or adjusting other pecuniary benefits that they receive. On the other hand, if the enterprise benefits from paying bribe, employees' wages and other benefits could either increase as a spillover effect or remain unchanged depending on several factors, including the enterprise's appetite for further bribe payment in anticipation of reaping more benefits in the long term. We use a unique dataset from the survey of Vietnamese small- and medium-scale manufacturing enterprises to validate these propositions and the channels through which they operate. The results of the analysis show that when an enterprise pays bribe, it reduces the wages of its employees (mostly for those within the highest wage bracket) by approximately 27.6%. Our result further shows that employees' membership of a trade union, an enterprise's performance and its capacity to move between different jurisdictions of operation, investment in human capital development, and formality status are the potential channels through which the identified impact operates. These findings support the need for anti-corruption policies, which could have other spillover effects on decent labor outcomes in Vietnam and other developing countries. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We use experimental data to explore the conditions under which males and females may differ in their tendency to act corruptly and their tolerance of corruption. We ask if males and females respond differently to the tradeoff between the benefits accrued by corrupt actors versus the negative externality imposed on other people by corruption. Our findings reveal that neither males nor females uniformly are more likely to engage in, or be more tolerant of corruption: it depends on the exact bribery conditions—which can reduce or enhance welfare overall—and the part played in the bribery act. Females are less likely to tolerate and engage in corruption when doing so reduces overall welfare. On the other hand, males are less tolerant of bribery when it enhances welfare but confers payoff disadvantages on them relative to corrupt actors. Females' behavior is consistent across roles when bribery reduces welfare, but apart from that, gender behavior is strongly role-dependent. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

While a growing body of work suggests that women representatives are less likely to be involved in corruption scandals, we know less about if changes in representation patterns also have implications for citizens’ first-hand experiences with corruption in public service delivery. This study suggests that women elected representatives reduce street level bribery, in particular when the share of women increases in contexts where relatively few women are elected or when the absolute increase in women’s representation is relatively large. Using newly collected data on the share of women in 128 regional level parliaments in 10 European countries and four rounds of the European Quality of Government Index (EQI) survey (2010–2021), our two-way fixed effects models show that on average, the proportion of women in regional parliaments is strongly associated with citizens’ self-reported experiences of bribery across all countries and years. Furthermore, our difference-in-difference design shows that the level of bribery in public service provision dropped more sharply in regions that experienced a greater absolute or greater marginal increase in women’s representation. Our results may be understood in light of women candidates placing priority on well-functioning and low corrupt public service provision and the important signals of inclusiveness, non-discrimination and decreased tolerance towards corruption that women’s representation conveys to civil servants. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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The United Nations Convention against Corruption (UNCAC) is the first legally binding global anti-corruption instrument, and its own review mechanism provides a channel for states and civil society to participate in the commitment to combat corruption. Theoretically, this article engages with the theory of international regime to offer a broad framework explaining why and how China has adapted to the international anti-corruption regime. As a response, legally, this article analyses both good practices and shortcomings in China's legislation and law enforcement mechanisms in terms of international anti-corruption cooperation based on Chapter IV (International Cooperation) of the UNCAC. The data collection and analysis methods include documentary review, interviews, questionnaires, and expert investigation. Then, after elaborating the most recent institutional anti-corruption achievements achieved by China since 2012, the author concludes that legal and ideological obstacles to China's full adaptation into the global anti-corruption community remain. Thus, some suggestions for how to improve the legislation and enforcement of China's international anti-corruption cooperation are provided. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Corruption, bribery, and white-collar crime are inherently relational phenomena as actors involved in them exchange information, resources, and favours. These exchanges give rise to a network in which the actors are embedded. While this has been often emphasized in the literature, there is a lack of studies actually empirically examining the structural properties of corruption networks. We aim to fill this gap with this exploratory study analysing the networks of corporate and public sector bribery. We theoretically ground the network analysis in two compatible criminological frameworks: routine activity theory and analytical criminology. We extract information about relations and interactions among involved actors in three cases from Statements of Facts from Deferred Prosecution Agreements obtained from United Kingdom's Serious Fraud Office. Our findings indicate that the bribery networks resemble core-periphery structure networks with ties predominantly concentrated between a few very central actors (core), who ad hoc engage with actors from the periphery. Moreover, we also see a strong tendency of actors to repeat interactions within certain dyads. In terms of temporal dynamics, we observe periods of relative inaction alternating with periods of frequent and repeated contacts triggered by the presence of contracts susceptible to corruption. We discuss these findings in terms of their policy implications for designing evidence-based intervention and prevention measures. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

While recent empirical evidence reveals some effective interventions in preventing corruption among bureaucrats and politicians, there has been little discussion on how to prevent the bribe-giving behavior of ordinary citizens. This paper investigates the role of social media information in influencing the supply of bribes by citizens instead of the demand side. We, therefore, developed and published an original news application in India and implemented a 3-month experiment. In this application, we randomly circulate live news related to corruption to users and incorporate a lab experiment into the app system to elicit users' bribery behavior every week. We find that corruption news involving politicians within a close geographical proximity lowers users' moral costs against the anti-social bribery act, leading to an increase in the amount of bribes. However, news of accused citizens and officials within the geographic proximity increases their moral cost against bribes and decreases the amount. This suggests that individually tailored local information on corruption may be an effective tool to reduce citizens' supply of bribes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study investigates the influence of formal and informal institutions on firm innovation in transitional economies of Central and Eastern Europe (CEEs) by explicitly differentiating between corruption and bribery as distinct informal institutions. We integrate institutional theory and legitimacy theory to explain that the failure of formal institutions creates an environment of corruption which encourages firms to use bribes to facilitate economic exchange. We test our hypotheses on the innovation performance of a sample (n = 1603) of firms in 11 CEEs. The results show that weak rule of law and ineffective business regulations in CEEs propagate the perception of corruption that inhibits firm innovation. However, the use of bribery enables firms to transform this environment of corruption into innovation outcomes. The policy and managerial implications of our research for differentiating between corruption and bribery and our findings that bribery acts as the glue that binds formal and informal institutions are fully discussed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The following article addresses the complex nature of informal exchange in contemporary Russia. I borrow the term "brift" from Abel Polese in order to analyze a hybrid nature of informal transactions that have a ternary nature embodying bribery, gift-giving, and a mechanism of building social capital. While there exists a wealth of studies on informal exchange in Post-Soviet states and modern Russia, the question of how participants of the exchange make sense of the transactions and conditions of the exchange, how they morally and mentally estimate the value and price of the favors, and how they choose appropriate items for reciprocating for the favors still remains understudied. The study addresses this theoretical dilemma and provides a detailed investigation of the meaning-making process intrinsic to this type of informal transactions. The article provides analysis of the in-depth interviews with citizens of St. Petersburg and demonstrates the complexity of the cognitive work of calculating the right price and estimating the proper value and fitness of the items to be used in the brift transactions. This research generally points to the need for a greater sensitivity to intricacies of meaning, practice, and cognitive work that saturate informal exchange, and further calls for a wider acceptance of the concept of brift. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Corruption is prevalent in the developing world, negatively impacting small businesses. While research on corruption has focused on bribery from an economics-system perspective, there has been less research on the role of bribery from a more micro perspective. In this study, we explore bribery from the demand side by anchoring our qualitative, theory-building efforts in 12 new firms, 10 government officials, and 13 agents (for brokering bribery payments) in India. We found that in corrupt systems, the bureaucracy of government departments is deliberately made more bureaucratic by corrupt informal autonomous ventures within government departments that use informal human resource management systems to develop and perpetuate corruption and that recognize new legal constraints as an opportunity to use brokers to facilitate bribery. We highlight how these corrupt informal autonomous ventures engage in and perpetuate corruption, a practice that is destructive to the government, to small businesses, and to the people's confidence in the nation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper used multi-country firm-level data covering 104 countries for the period from 2010 to 2019 to investigate the effects of bribery on credit access for firms holding bargaining power and/or facing market competition. We used firms' size and legal status to capture their bargaining power, while the levels of market competition were analyzed according to the number of competitors in the same working field. Our empirical results provided evidence to support the "greasing-the-wheels-of-credit access" hypothesis. Furthermore, the effects of bribery become stronger for larger-sized or formally registered firms, and those facing no market competition. These effects also become pronounced if we controlled the endogeneity problem. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Corruption has been a major obstacle to economic growth around the world. In this paper, we examine how firms interact with corrupt government officials either to minimize the impact of corruption on their operations or to maximize their benefit of paying a bribe. Our estimates show that firms know exactly what they need and use their limited resources to bribe only relevant government authorities. In other words, firms are rational bribers who know exactly what they need and optimize their bribes to fulfill that need. This type of intentional bribery could be reduced by enhanced institutional environments and improved openness of the economy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We test the hypothesis that US corporations headquartered in states with greater public corruption are also prone to more unethical behavior when operating abroad. We exploit passage of Foreign Corrupt Practices Act (FCPA) that curtailed bribery of foreign officials and find firms in corrupt states, especially those exporting to more corrupt countries, suffer greater performance decline following FCPA, suggesting larger loss from anticipated bribery restrictions. Controlling for industry, firms in corrupt states are more likely to be targets of FCPA enforcement actions. They are also more likely to have paid foreign bribes, as disclosed during pre-FCPA investigations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper studies how social ties interact with bribery and corruption. In the laboratory, subjects are in triads where two 'performers' individually complete an objective real-effort task and an evaluator designates one of them as the winner of a monetary prize. In one treatment dimension, we vary whether performers can bribe the evaluator—where any bribe made is non-refundable, irrespective of the evaluator's decision. A second treatment dimension varies the induced social ties between the evaluator and the performers. The experimental evidence suggests that both bribes and social ties may corrupt evaluators' decisions. Bribes decrease the importance of performance in the decision. The effect of social ties is asymmetric. While performers' bribes vary only little with their ties to the evaluator, evaluators exhibit favoritism based on social ties when bribes are not possible. This 'social-tie-based' corruption is, however, replaced by bribe-based corruption when bribes are possible. We argue that these results have concrete consequences for possible anti-corruption policies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]