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This study investigates how bribery is defined, negotiated, and practiced in the everyday lives of ordinary North Koreans. Reflecting on interviews spanning over two decades with North Korean migrants in South Korea and China, a team of North Korea experts has identified the patterns of micro-level bribery in everyday life in North Korea that differ, to some extent, from those of other post-communist states in Eastern Europe and Asia. By carefully examining the accounts of ten former North Korean residents, the researchers find that the traditional socialist economy, once prevalent in workplaces, schools, and hospitals, has now been supplanted by individual-to-individual private market interactions. Moreover, bribery serves not only as an informal practice but also as a "moral economy," which differs from the more organized forms of corruption seen at the elite and enterprise levels. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Distrust in the civil service is not unique to any country but felt across much of the globe amid ascendant populist movements. A significant correlate of distrust in the civil service is the perception of corruption among bureaucrats. Our research addresses two main questions. First, in OECD countries, to what extent does the public view bureaucrats as corrupt? Second, what factors explain these perceptions? Data from 23 countries in the International Social Survey Programme's 2016 Role of Government survey are analyzed using multilevel logistic regression models. Among the explanatory variables included in this multilevel analysis are respondents' exposure to bribery, political party support, and political efficacy. Country-level correlates drawn from the 2016 Worldwide Governance Indicators are analyzed to explore the impact of governance quality on corruption perceptions. Results indicate that better quality of government is associated with lower perceptions of bureaucratic corruption. Likewise, notable individual-level findings suggest political efficacy and exposure to corruption are significantly associated with corruption perceptions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This research investigates the prevalence of corruption and use of intermediaries at immigration sites, the municipality, and the Criminal Investigation Department (CID) in Mogadishu, Somalia. Through an online survey, 80 responses were recorded from residents in Mogadishu who work in academia, businesses, and international NGOs. Five anonymous civil servants were interviewed over telephone to further learn about the difficulties and potential solutions to the corruption problem. The statistical analysis revealed that Immigration is relatively less corrupted. This is due to changes in management and administrative reforms, ability to challenge fraudulent temptation of staff through call centers, and having better institutional and staff capacities than the other two institutions in question. Furthermore, direct supervision from the Ministry of Internal Security at the site of immigration with relatively enhanced working conditions with higher salaries allows for better functioning compared to Mogadishu Municipality, which is a local authority, and CID, a subdivision of an underpaid police department. Alternatively, more than half of the citizens use an intermediary to obtain their passports, birth certificates, and criminal record letters. According to the binary regression analysis, male applicants are more likely to use an intermediary than females. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper explored the attitudes of Kuwaiti residents toward corruption practices in Kuwait and the role of the Nazaha Kuwait Anti-Corruption Authority in tackling such actions. To achieve the aim of this study, a survey questionnaire, which was based on a survey introduced by the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime in 2018, was distributed to 535 participants in Kuwait. The questionnaire covered areas related to problems facing Kuwait, behaviors of public officers, opinions on practices of public sector employees, corruption in Kuwait by industry, the role of Nazaha in Kuwait, the correlation between bribery and access to government services, and the reporting of corruption in Kuwait. The collected data were analyzed with SPSS. The findings indicate that 374 respondents noted corruption as the most serious problem in Kuwait, which is practiced systematically in Kuwait due to the prevalence of nepotism and other cultural reasons. In addition, it was found that there is dissatisfaction with the role of Nazaha, with 46.9 and 32.3% of participants reporting that Nazaha did not react in time and did not catch offenders, respectively. This study suggests that Nazaha should be empowered with further legal means to tackle corruption in the future. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article argues that Black Maroons were able to maintain a semiformal space of freedom in Territorial Florida through their work as go-betweens. Scholarship understands the utility of the Maroons to the Florida Indians, but this text posits that Black go-betweens, through their work as guides and interpreters, were also of vital importance to settlers. As Florida was Indigenous space prior to 1835, go-betweens became essential to settler ambitions in Florida, from officials of the Territorial Government to planters. The go-betweens' ease of interaction with Indigenous and settler society shows that in spite of their status as fugitives from slavery, they could force the two dominant slaveholding societies in Florida to accept their claims of freedom. Furthermore, rather than simply falling prey to bribery, go-betweens used treaty proceedings between the Florida Indians and Territorial Government to have the interests of their own communities heard. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

When people want to conduct a transaction, but doing so would be morally disreputable, they can obfuscate the fact that they are engaging in an exchange while still arranging for a set of transfers that are effectively equivalent to an exchange. Obfuscation through structures such as gift-giving and brokerage is pervasive across a wide range of disreputable exchanges, such as bribery and sex work. In this article, we develop a theoretical account that sheds light on when actors are more versus less likely to obfuscate. Specifically, we report a series of experiments addressing the effect of trust on the decision to engage in obfuscated disreputable exchange. We find that actors obfuscate more often with exchange partners high in loyalty-based trustworthiness, with expected reciprocity and moral discomfort mediating this effect. However, the effect is highly contingent on the type of trust; trust facilitates obfuscation when it is loyalty-based, but this effect flips when trust is ethics-based. Our findings not only offer insights into the important role of relational context in shaping moral understandings and choices about disreputable exchange, but they also contribute to scholarship on trust by demonstrating that distinct forms of trust can have diametrically opposed effects. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Using data from the Afrobarometer surveys, this paper finds that people living in regions in which police corruption is more prevalent are more likely to report that they or someone in their family have been victims of physical assault. People living in more corrupted regions are also more likely to report that they or someone in their family has had something stolen from their home. We find no statistically significant gender differences in the average marginal effects. Controlling for the incidence of corruption in other domains reduces the size of the estimated association but does not render it insignificant in terms of statistical significance or magnitude. Non‐police corruption is also strongly associated with an increased risk of crime. For both types of crime, the evidence points to "transactional" police corruption (having to pay bribes to get help) rather than "predatory" police corruption (having to pay bribes to avoid problems) as driving the relationship. Finally, we show that, controlling for whether the respondent reports being a victim of either type of crime, police corruption predicts an increase in the probability that the respondent reports feeling unsafe while walking in their own neighborhood thus imposing a cost even on those who have not been victims. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The bulk of scholarship on police intervention in enforcing COVID-19 pandemic-imposed restrictions focuses on police misconduct, securitisation, human rights, police preparedness, and legitimacy, but empirical research on police corruption during the restriction in Nigeria is sparse despite reports of pervasive police extortion and bribery. Thus, this study fills the academic gap by examining the dynamics of police predation and corruption during the enforcement in Nigeria. With interview data, I uniquely examined the intervention from the purview of predatory policing – an aspect of policing that is understudied in the context of COVID-19 policing despite its relevance in contemporary discourse on social control. Evidence indicates that, as COVID-19 policing characterised predation in Nigeria, the embedded problems of police corruption revolve around unresolved police institutional challenges and police-public connivance that results from moral decadence, thereby portending gloomy implications for law enforcement and society. Therefore, advancing and implementing police reforms, addressing moral corruption, and resolving widespread socioeconomic problems are very critical in the effective policing and containment of future public health crises. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We know little about how coalitional strategy affects the electoral fates of political parties in presidential democracy. The literature on coalitions in parliamentary systems shows a negative impact of entering government, while the coattail effects literature on presidential systems suggests some benefits. Combining elements from both approaches, we argue that there is a conditional electoral effect of joining the cabinet under coalitional presidentialism. Even considering presidentialism's heightened attribution of responsibility to a unipersonal executive, we find that coalition parties do indeed place a meaningful electoral wager whenever they choose to enter the president's cabinet as identifiable allies. Leveraging data on Brazilian elections held at national and local levels over 24 years and employing an innovative measure of portfolio salience, we show that the payoff of this wager is contingent on control of the most highly-valued cabinet positions and on the popular approval of the president. [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]

One of the main challenges developing nations face is curbing bribery. While there are many efforts to curb bribery, most focused at macro level, such as law, while little has been examined at the micro level, e.g., individual behavior and intention. Those who did investigate at the micro level tend to focus on the recipients rather than the ones giving the bribe. We explored eight factors that influence Malaysian young adults' bribe giving intention based on the Reasoned Action Approach (RAA). A total of 345 respondents (Mage = 20.68, SD = 2.01, 189 are females) completed questionnaires about all RAA variables. Partial Least Squares Structural Equation Modelling (PLS-SEM) was carried out using smartPLS3.0 to analyze the result. The result revealed that out of the eight variables, four variables—Instrumental attitudes, Experiential Attitudes, Parents' descriptive norms and Capacity—explain 74% of the variance in bribe giving intention. An important take-away is that young adult's perception of whether their parents gave or did not give bribes in a given situation is important in influencing their bribe giving intention. Bribe giving prevention messages must be targeted explicitly toward parents, where they play a crucial role in curbing this dishonesty. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

How does government recentralization reform affect corruption? We utilize the pilot recentralization reform that transforms the legislative function, power, and responsibility of the district‐level authorities to the higher level of the government organ in Vietnam as a quasi‐natural experiment to address the aforementioned question. We find strong evidence that recentralization reform leads to lower corruption. The result illustrates that, among the firms which have the highest probability of making a bribe payment, those incorporated in jurisdictions experiencing the recentralization reform are 4.3% less likely to pay a bribe. In addition, the perception that bribery is a common and necessary practice is also significantly lowered in the post‐recentralization period. We further show that the impact of recentralization is stronger for firms which lack a political connection. Overall, these results shed light on the real impact of the government recentralization reform and also the determinants of corruption, thereby providing important policy implications for policymakers to create a more conducive business environment. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Migration can affect the practice of corruption in migrant-sending countries in a number of ways. In this paper we test whether or not remittance receiving households are more likely to be targeted for corruption. Using micro-level data from 20 Latin American countries, this study finds that migrant households are about 15 percentage points more likely to be asked for a bribe than non-migrant-sending households. The corruption effect is further confirmed by an instrumental variable estimation. Our findings suggest that remittances can have an unintended effect on households' risk of experiencing corruption. The excess exposure may discourage remittances and limit the positive development benefits of migration and remittances. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This conceptual paper presents a framework that integrates 11 forms of voluntary payments as seemingly disparate as bribes and bequests, and gifts and gratuities to show that "voluntary" payments vary in the shades of gray not only in terms of how much like bribes they are but also in terms of how voluntary they actually are. We provocatively suggest that these payment types might be susceptible to becoming entrenched through self‐reinforcing norms because the voluntary payments are not necessarily voluntary and to an extent akin to bribes. Specifically, it provides an overarching framework to showcase the similarities and differences between bribes, lobbying efforts, suggested fees, pay what you want, tips, bequests, legacies, charity, crowdsourcing, dowry, and gifts, identifying gaps in domains that are under‐researched. Starting with the question as to whether a service has been, is being, or will be performed for the voluntary payment, and whether payments are made to an individual or a cause, the framework highlights the following: (1) the differences in the purpose underlying these payments, (2) the different modes of payment used; (3) the economic and social norms governing the payments; and (4) external and internal emotions associated with these payment types. The integrative framework allows for an amalgam of disparate literatures ranging from morality and behavioral pricing to charity and gift giving. The process model suggests a multitude of areas for future research in the domain of consumers' voluntary payment decisions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

According to recently popular pragmatist views, it may be rational for one to believe p when one's evidence doesn't favour p over not-p. This may happen according to pragmatists in situations where one can gain something practically important out of believing p. In this paper, I argue that given some independently plausible assumptions about the argumentative nature of philosophy and the irrelevance of bribes for good arguments, pragmatism leads to a contradiction. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Using data from the seventh round of the Afrobarometer, we find that a greater regional incidence of corruption in the utilities sector is associated with a reduced likelihood that a household reports that it has access to enough clean water. This result is not evident in older rounds of the survey that were conducted prior to methodological improvements made in round seven. Moreover, this association holds only in areas with a piped water system. Thus, our findings are consistent with the argument that corruption is a barrier to accessing water through its impact on the quality of water services. While a household that has paid a bribe is more likely to have a water access point, the regional incidence of utilities corruption predicts that the household will not have enough clean water. Individual acts of bribery, while associated with connection to a water network, are not associated with greater access in reality. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Corruption continues to overshadow the fundamental contributions of the construction industry, preventing the delivery of infrastructure services. Therefore, the aim of the study was to investigate perceptions of corruption within the South African construction industry. The study population consisted of practitioners and clients in the private and public sectors operating in Johannesburg, South Africa, across seven councils and associations. Participants completed a self-administered survey consisting of 49 questions focusing on 10 key areas assessing corruption in construction. There were a total of 270 survey respondents. There was consensus among participants that bribery exists in the South African construction industry and that bribery discourages whistleblowing. A majority of respondents agreed that corruption affects economic growth of the South African construction industry. Respondents felt corruption led to late completion of projects, poor workmanship, and led to the use of sub-standard materials. Respondents agreed that poor procurement processes resulted in the appointment of incompetent contractors and that practitioners engage in unethical behavior due to desperation for work. Findings support, corruption is a major issue in the South African construction industry and approaches are needed to eradicate the corruption. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article is the first to examine whether bribery hurts or promotes policy consistency for firms confronting institutional and credit constraints by using World Bank Enterprise Surveys covering 104 developing countries from 2002 to 2006. By using the questionnaire that is only available in the 2002-2006 survey, policy consistency is measured by firms' perception of the degree of consistency in officials' interpretation of the law. Bribery reduces the consistency of policy implementation. The adverse impact of bribery on policy consistency is evident only in lower-income countries. Furthermore, these effects become more significant for firms facing institutional and credit constraints. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

How does frontline corruption influence individuals' decisions to emigrate? Existing research has found that perceptions of grand political corruption promote emigration, particularly among the highly educated. In this article, we shift the focus to the role of frontline corruption in driving emigration decisions and distinguish between the effects of the payment of bribes to frontline bureaucrats and those of nepotism in public employment. Using data from the Balkan Barometer for the period 2018–21, we find that both bribe-paying experiences and perceived public-sector nepotism are important emigration drivers. Our findings also reveal that the more highly educated an individual is, the greater the influence of perceived nepotism on the emigration decision. However, the influence of first-hand experiences with bribery is larger and remains similar across education categories. Our analysis emphasizes the need to disaggregate the varied manifestations of corruption when examining the determinants of (high-skilled) emigration. This article contributes to our understanding of the drivers of emigration in the Western Balkans and the wider corruption–migration nexus. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article introduces the concept of 'coloniality of anti-corruption' to help situate and describe contemporary US anti-corruption policies aimed at Puerto Rico. The aim of the concept of coloniality of anti-corruption is to underscore corruption's inextricable relationship to race, class, gender, and other colonial power relations. The article argues that US interventions with the Puerto Rican government, along with its distribution of disaster relief in the wake of Hurricane María (2017) and subsequent earthquakes (2020), are best understood against the backdrop of a long history of corruption narrative implemented by the US. This is a narrative that seeks to legitimate US's colonial and capitalist expansion in Puerto Rico. To demonstrate this, the article explores the application of anti-corruption narratives by the Trump administration to justify its disaster relief policies for Puerto Rico. In particular, the article focuses on Trump's tweets describing Puerto Rican politicians as 'corrupt' and Puerto Rico as 'geography of fraud.' In doing so, the article provides a theoretical account of the uses of corruption and anti-corruption discourses to justify colonial and capitalist's global endeavors. It also illustrates how anti-corruption policies reproduce the idea of the non-white other as the corrupt subject and denotes the humanitarian consequences of such policies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Anecdotal evidence suggests that intermediaries who help citizens and businesses navigate the complexities of government regulatory procedures can also facilitate bribery. Moreover, it has been argued that traditional methods of detecting bribery may be ineffective in the presence of intermediaries. This paper investigates whether asymmetric punishment (viz., punishing bribe taking, but not giving) can reduce bribery when both intermediated as well direct corruption are possible and the complexity of the regulatory process is endogenous. We show that if asymmetric punishment can induce whistle blowing, then a switch from symmetric to asymmetric punishment can result in fewer bribery transactions, a reduction in regulatory complexity, and an increase in clients' gain from regulatory approvals. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The sixteenth- and seventeenth-century Transylvanian Sabbatarians represented one of the most radical form of the Reformation whose only retained doctrinal link to Christianity was belief in Jesus. By the mid-nineteenth century, even this last doctrine dropped out of their faith and they officially converted to Judaism, thus founding the only proselyte congregation in contemporary Europe. They were immediately suspected of having ulterior motives for their conversion, and in the twentieth century, accusations proliferated of deliberate Jewish proselytizing and bribery. Here, we go back to the beginnings and search the Sabbatarians' earliest texts for the original, theological grounds that they themselves asserted. The working hypothesis is that analysis of this key article of faith, belief in Jesus, is sufficient to mark out the later course of the Sabbatarians' theological development. The interpretation of the messianic mission and tasks clearly indicates which side the Sabbatarians would lean to in the course of their several centuries of balancing between Christianity and Judaism. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The manipulation of football match scores in Indonesia is familiar and continues to increase. The settlement of the case in the judge's decision was based on two criminal acts, namely the crime of fraud (Article 378 of the Criminal Code) and bribery (UU No. 11 of 1980). It is stated in several judge's decisions, including in Judge's Decision No.31/Pid.Sus/2020/PN.Smd and Judge's Decision No.48/Pid.Sus/2019/PN BNR. Manipulation of match scores as an attempt to violate the goals of the sport of football. This research aims to verify cases of match score manipulation by referees in realizing sports goals. The results of the discussion prove that the two judges' decisions that classify match score manipulation In the two judges' decisions that classify match score manipulation cases as fraud and bribery, there is the fulfillment of the elements in both of these crimes. In contrast, the subject of the violation is the referee who leads the match, which requires Integrity and leadership character. Then the goal of a soccer match is to support the embodiment of the formation of national values and character. Then when a referee is involved in a match score manipulation case, it means he has generally failed the goals of the sport. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article interrogates street traders' encounters with the bribery and extortion by task force officials in Lagos State, Nigeria, using a mixed method of social research survey, in-depth interview and observation. The study found that poverty (p = 0.000), gender (p = 0.001), location (p = 0.009), employment status (p = 0.003), family pressure (p = 0.008) and payment of remittance (p = 0.000) are significant predictors of willingness to bribe task force officials (p < 0.001). It also established that traders, who perceived the street trading law of Lagos as a deterrent law, tended to bribe task force officials in order to escape justice. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The study examines the possibility of having a very low rate of unemployment in Nigeria, if there is a reduced rate of corruption in the long‐term. While using cointegration regressions and Vector Error Correction Mechanism (VECM) over the period 1996–2020, it is affirmed that corruption could increase unemployment rate in the long run. The two corruption indicators employed (control of corruption and corruption index) are found to have a substantial effect on unemployment rate. Further evidence confirms that corruption and unemployment are cyclically interdependent. Findings indeed stress that a high level of corruption is harmful to employment growth. On the other hand, in the absence of sufficient job opportunities, rent‐seeking government officials would be more interested in collecting bribes from job seekers, which results in sustained unlawful practices among the public officials. Thus, adopting effective corruption‐control measures is critical. It is therefore suggested that to effectively tackle corruption incidents, there should be incentives for citizens or public officials to report bribery and the process of reporting corruption incidents should be further simplified. Strengthening anti‐corruption agencies and developing a sound legal framework that promotes a culture of lawfulness and impeccable practices in the public sector are central. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper, we conduct an empirical analysis to examine whether police officers are disciplined more severely than other government officers. We used data on disciplinary actions in cases of bribery, which had been extracted from the casebook on disciplinary appeals reviews (2004–2018) published by the Appeals Commission of the Republic of Korea. The results of the ordinal logistic regression for the entire period (2004–2018) show that disciplinary actions imposed by the police agency were more severe than other government agencies. However, in a period-separated analysis of police disciplinary rationalisation policies in 2011, the differences in the level of disciplinary actions between the police and other agencies were only significant in the former period (2004–2011). The difference was not significant in the latter (2012–2018). This implies that the police agency imposed more severe disciplinary actions than other government agencies in the past. However, the latter period analysis implies that the disciplinary tendency of the police changed due to the effectiveness of the disciplinary rationalisation policy of the South Korean police agency. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Practices labelled as corrupt in nineteenth-century European elections are generally conceived either as a form of domination where the candidates and their agents use exclusive resources for personal gain or a means of transaction between candidates and voters, on the assumption that candidates deploy corrupt practices in order to perusade voters. Consequently, electoral corruption in the nineteenth century is considered a tool that limits the participation of enfranchised citizens, whose conception of corruption is largely uncultivated. This study challenges this notion and demonstrates how corrupt practices by electors in societies where freedom was not guaranteed, did not restrain but instead extended the possibilities of political participation. The novelty of this study is based on integrating research focused on politicization beyond the elite and the new history of corruption, using Great Britain, France, and Spain as case studies. This integrated process found that corruption was used by electors to overturn unfavourable results, thus providing a platform for participation beyond voting. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

"Corruption in the Americas" is a book that provides concise and accessible coverage of corruption issues in six Central and South American countries: Bolivia, Brazil, Colombia, Guatemala, Mexico, and Peru. The book highlights how organized crime negatively impacts governance institutions and perceptions of state legitimacy, with corruption affecting state policy, military, police, and other public institutions. The authors discuss the Odebrecht scandal as a representative case that reveals systemic corruption in Latin America. While the book offers valuable case studies, it lacks critical engagement with the geopolitical dimensions and historical precursors of corruption in these countries, as well as the role of US foreign policy. [Extracted from the article]

This article's main concern is to come to an understanding of the reasons why the Afghan army could not be successful against the Taliban during the withdrawal process and what the effects were of this failure on international relations. The main argument in the study about the failure of the Afghan Army is that because the transition stages from the lower identity to the upper have not been completed, and the identity structure was left as a tribal-based one rather than integrated Afghan identity, the loyalty to the state could not be fulfilled and therefore the practices like bribery or favouritism in assignments led to corruption in the system causing an imperfect structure with a failure against the Taliban. As to the effects on international relations, the withdrawal of the USA from the region caused the power vacuum in Afghanistan to deepen even more. Whilst analyzing the aspects of the reasons why the Afghan army had failed against the Taliban, the on-site observation method is used lasting 6 months between June 2017 and January 2018 and the on-site interviews were personally carried out during this aforementioned time period. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study examines collective knowledge about the practice of "la mordida," or police shakedowns, in the state of Quintana Roo, Mexico. The dual practices of police seeking payments and foreign tourists paying local police to resolve traffic stops is explored using data collected from web travel forums. Tourists to Quintana Roo share their experiences and developed wisdom for avoiding police stops, managing police shakedowns attempts during stops, the negotiation of la mordida after a stop has occurred, and the successful resolution of a stop, which may or may not include an exchange of money. The study describes the interactional strategies that compose elements of the la mordida frames present in tourist web forums, which illustrates the importance of the forums in both facilitating la mordida and contesting it among those visiting the area. The study contributes to literature focused on police corruption, deviant and coercive exchanges, crime victim scripts, and research focused on the resources that internet forums provide in avoiding, defending against, and facilitating coercive exchanges, especially in the context of tourism. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In previous papers of the authors, a generalized evolutionary approach was developed for the analysis of popular inspection and corruption games. Namely, a two-level hierarchy was studied, where a local inspector I of a pool of agents (that may break the law) can be corrupted and is further controlled by the higher authority A. Here, we extend this two-level modeling by answering the following questions: (i) what levels of illegal profit r of violators and what level of bribes α (fraction of illegal profit asked as a bribe from a violator) of an inspector are feasible, that is, realizable in stable equilibria of generalized replicator dynamics; and (ii) what α can be optimal for a corrupted inspector that aims at maximizing the total profit. Concrete settings that we have in mind are illegal logging, the sales of products with substandard quality, and tax evasion. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A tractable method of solving 3-person games in which players' pure strategies are staircase functions is suggested. The solution is meant to be Paretoefficient. The method considers any 3-person staircase-function game as a succession of 3-person games in which strategies are constants. For a finite staircase-function game, each constant-strategy game is a trimatrix game whose size is likely to be relatively small to solve it in a reasonable time. It is proved that any staircase-function game has a single Pareto-efficient situation if every constant-strategy game has a single Pareto-efficient situation, and vice versa. Besides, it is proved that, whichever the staircase-function game continuity is, any Pareto-efficient situation of staircase function-strategies is a stack of successive Pareto-efficient situations in the constantstrategy games. If a staircase-function game has two or more Pareto-efficient situations, the best efficient situation is one which is the farthest from the triple of the most unprofitable payoffs. In terms of 0-1-standardization, the best efficient situation is the farthest from the triple of zero payoffs. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Corruption in all its forms, from bribery to influence and distortion of oversight, accountability and justice systems, in order to protect the criminal behavior of functionaries (public officials and political officials) is a global phenomenon. Corruption as a phenomenon is found in well-established democracies such as Canada, and is often endemic in young democracies such as South Africa, who fall into a cycle of political corruption and administrative accountability avoidance. What are the cross-cutting risk factors and mitigation factors that shape the functionality of anti-corruption mechanisms? This comparative analysis of corruption and state capture provides insight into the functionality of oversight, anti-corruption and accountability mechanisms in both countries. Findings indicate that both Canada and South Africa are at risk of the erosion of safeguards and at risk of the deterioration of the levels of vigilance required to prevent state capture. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The predominant way of eliciting risk attitudes is to ask decision-makers to choose between discrete monetary lotteries with known probabilities attached to the payoffs. Yet, arguably, most choices made day-to-day entail continuous outcomes where objective distributions are unknown. This paper investigates responses to continuous "prospects," employing parametric methods based upon prospect theory under conditions of risk and uncertainty. We find that behavior under uncertainty seemed to mirror that of risk, but there appear to be some differences in how participants dealt with the uncertainty frame compared to risk. Participants appear not to treat "equally likely" outcomes as being "equally likely," thus demonstrated cumulative probability warping suggested by prospect theory. Participants' behavior was difficult to fully reconcile with prospect theory, at least to the extent that it is commonly parameterized, perhaps due to endpoints (in particular zero endpoints) being "salient." Since continuous interval densities have zero mass at zero, this result is curious and has not been reported in experiments using discrete lotteries. We conjecture that although participants on one level understood the nature of the continuous prospects, the format induced a focus on endpoints over and above what would be warranted by the objective distributions given to them. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Given current climate change issues, scholars have recently focused on how different adaptation and mitigation policies may be effective at improving the environment. On the one hand, researchers argue that climate change policies will help reduce environmental problems like CO2 emissions due to their focus on green energy and markets. On the other hand, many argue that these policies are too small in scope, reformist, and do not address the underlying issues driving climate change. However, little is known about how climate change policies as a whole are impacting CO2 emissions cross-nationally. To address this research gap, the authors use two-way fixed effects regression analysis to test how climate change policies impact CO2 emissions per capita across 159 nations from 1996 to 2018. Most importantly, this analysis considers how factors like governance, specifically a nation's control of corruption, moderates the impact of climate change policies on CO2 emissions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

As the Imperial Aulic Council of the Holy Roman Empire grew in stature over the course of the early modern period, the integrity of its membership came increasingly into focus. This article analyzes that heightened scrutiny through the lens of oaths. Working from the promulgated versions, drafts, and legislative history of the court ordinances, it argues that the oaths sworn by court officials were specifically tightened in order to deter corruption and the appearance of corruption. The close textual analysis reveals a keen appreciation of bureaucratic mores by the political masters of the court. For such an important instrument of imperial power as the Imperial Aulic Council, perceptions mattered. [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]

Bribery, a grand global challenge, often occurs across national jurisdictions. Behavioral research studying bribery to inform anticorruption interventions, however, has merely examined bribery within single nations. Here, we report online experiments and provide insights into crossnational bribery. We ran a pilot study (across three nations) and a large, incentivized experiment using a bribery game played across 18 nations (N = 5,582, total number of incentivized decisions = 346,084). The results show that people offer disproportionally more bribes to interaction partners from nations with a high (vs. low) reputation for foreign bribery, measured by macrolevel indicators of corruption perceptions. People widely share nation-specific expectations about a nation's bribery acceptance levels. However, these nation-specific expectations negatively correlate with actual bribe acceptance levels, suggesting shared yet inaccurate stereotypes about bribery tendencies. Moreover, the interaction partner's national background (more than one's own national background) drives people's decision to offer or accept a bribe--a finding we label conditional bribery. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Summary: Motivation: Civil servants are often seen as key actors responsible for systemic corruption in emerging economies. Yet, there is a dearth of empirical studies on what public officials think of bribery and corruption. Owing to the limitations of enrolling in‐service bureaucrats into research on the sensitive topic of bribery, the study tries to understand the perceptions of future bureaucrats. Purpose: The study is a novel attempt to analyse how the select candidates aspiring to join the highly competitive elite civil services in India respond to experimental bribery situations. What deters potential bribe‐takers from accepting bribes, and what do they think about corruption in public life? Methods and approach: The study employs mixed‐methods research to answer these questions. Experimental bribery games were administered to examine the impact of varying degrees of "punishment," "monitoring," and "public loss" and their relation to the varying "bribery amount." In addition, focus group discussions (FGDs) were conducted with these participants to explore the dynamics of corruption. Findings The findings suggest that high public loss and high severity of punishment were able to deter bribery even when the bribe was high. On the other hand, the impact of a high level of monitoring was only effective in cases where the bribe was low. FGDs revealed that social acceptance of corruption, and the low rate of convictions in corruption cases, are the main reasons for continuing corruption in the public sphere. Policy implications: The study suggests that in India and other countries in which corruption is systemic and socially accepted, it is imperative to move anti‐corruption policies away from their present fixation with strict monitoring to strict punishment. Monitoring alone without severe punishment is not sufficient. Corruption cases ought to have swift trials and a better rate of conviction. It is equally important to inculcate the values of social good and integrity in public life. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper analyses the impact of favouritism and corruption in procurement auctions in an emerging economy. In our model there are two firms: One is the favoured one, while the other is not. The firm that wins the contract needs to supply a good that meets a certain quality standard, failing which its payment would be withheld. There is corruption in the system: If the measured quality falls short of the minimum stipulated level, the winner can pay a bribe to inflate the reported quality. The same amount of bribe inflates the reported quality of the favoured firm by a higher magnitude as compared to the firm which is not in favour. It is shown that favouritism induces inefficient outcomes, reduces competition and leads to lower expected equilibrium quality. The favoured firm also earns a higher payoff. The welfare effects of favouritism are ambiguous and we illustrate our results with an example. • This paper analyses the impact of favouritism and corruption in procurement auctions. • There are two firms: one is the favoured one while the other is not. • Favouritism induces inefficiency, less competition, and lower equilibrium quality. • The favoured firm also earns a higher payoff. • The welfare effects of favouritism are ambiguous. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The efficacy of corruption perception indices to truly capture and accurately measure corruption behaviours has been often criticised. In fact, perceptions about corruption may not match actual experience and could represent distorted beliefs. Motivated by this criticism, we investigate the difference between perceived and experienced corruption (i.e. bribery) in public services in Europe by means of a theoretical model and an empirical analysis. Firstly, we model perceived corruption as a function of experienced corruption and a perception bias. Then, we employ a generalised setting of structural equation models to derive two distinct measures of perceived and experienced corruption from microdata on the public administration sector in Europe. The indices we obtain allow us to compare countries according to both measures of public corruption. Finally, our results suggest that perceptions of corruption may be affected by sources of media bias. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The infamous GlaxoSmithKline (GSK) bribery case of 2013 led to the emergence of compliance management as a local strategic response to ensuring compliance with regulations in the transnational pharmaceutical corporations within China. However, China's pharmaceutical industry has a long history of practicing the corrupt customs of "drug-incentivizing medicine" (yiyao buyi) and "guanxi-based sales" (guanxi xiaoshou), which are, obviously, at odds with the highest ethical standards for compliance management as well as the principle of the anti-corruption campaign of the current Chinese administration. Based upon an in-depth ethnographic work from China's pharmaceutical industry, this article proposes a new framework to examine the complicated dynamics of interaction between the state's anti-corruption policy, corrupt long-standing customary industrial practices, local cultural practice, and global compliance management norms in post-socialist spaces. Different from some studies that focus on the resistance to global norms by local forces, this study suggests a reverse direction and focuses on the positive reconstruction of the old socialist ideals and corrupt practices by modern disciplinary institutions with the capitalist work ethic in the Chinese workplace. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study aims to explore records' contributions to anti-corruption investigations. The study answers the question: what is the perception of anti-corruption investigators on the role of records and records management in their work? The goal is to produce new knowledge of the role records plays in investigating corruptionrelated offences. It presents findings from a qualitative explorative case study. Fifteen Nigeria's anti-corruption investigators were interviewed in the year 2020. Interview data collated are analysed using thematic analysis. The study reveals that adequate records alone cannot ensure accountability despite the nexus between proper recordkeeping and corruption. Enhancing the integrity and authenticity of records as the most acceptable accountability tool will add significant value for ease of use by accountability forums. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

I present a model of corruption with incomplete information where the bureaucrat may request a bribe from the citizen for providing a service. I show that corruption is detrimental to social welfare and consider a new policy to prevent it. I propose punishing bureaucrats who take bribes and rewarding citizens who report such cases. Neither punishment nor rewards can prevent corruption alone. However, the proper combination of punishment and rewards completely prevents corruption. I also show that higher bureaucracy increases corruption in equilibrium and makes it harder to combat it. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Despite local instances of single arbitrators' corruption not having proven completely absent from arbitration chronicles over the last decades, one may safely argue that until very recently, no scandal had ever been severe enough to shake the foundations of arbitration communities on a regional, let alone global, level. However, this eventually occurred in 2019 in Peru as the outcome of one of the countless parallel investigations stemming from the 2016 Odebrecht corruption saga, propagated from Brazil to the whole of Latin America, the Caribbean, sub-Saharan Africa, and beyond, and labelled by many as the largest scandal of its kind in recent history. Peru's vicissitudes revolved around a number of corrupted arbitrators who systematically accepted bribes and political favours from Odebrecht in return for favourable awards upholding the repricing of public-procurement contracts. This story can teach us about more than the simple evidence that arbitrators, too, might fall for corruption; criminologically, it suggests that arbitration as a dispute-resolution mechanism can find itself embedded within regionalised networked systems of corruption-prone regulatory capture, and even play an active role in their normalised perpetuation. To prevent this, while having regard for safeguarding the independence and confidentiality of arbitral proceedings to the highest possible extent, the enactment of context-sensitive binding regulation is advised. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The conventional view of corruption emphasizes its detrimental impact on the evaluations of public institutions. This view implies that in corruption-intense environments, the public should exert strong pressure on relevant authorities to combat corruption. Yet, multiple historical accounts suggest that in such contexts, corruption tends to thrive even despite extensive state-imposed anti-corruption measures. In this letter, we address this puzzle by studying the context-dependent effects of individual experiences of petty corrupt exchanges on the popular evaluation of public institutions. Drawing on the literature on the functionality of informal exchanges and normalization of corruption, we posit that negative effects of such experiences will be attenuated by the presence of institutional corruption among public service providers. In contexts permeated by corruption, corrupt exchanges will become routine, with limited effect on citizens' perceptions of street-level bureaucracy. Our empirical test, relying on a unique cross-national survey dataset from Central-Eastern Europe and a fine-grained ecological (municipality-level) indicator of corruption, largely supports these conjectures. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]