Letting the Briber Go Free: An Experiment on Mitigating Harassment Bribes

By Klaus Abbink, Utteeyo Dasgupta, Lata Gangadharan, Tarun K. Jain. Social Science Research Network, 2013

130 citations recorded by the source corpus.

This paper examines the effectiveness of using asymmetric liability to combat harassment bribes. Basu (2011) advocates legal immunity for bribe-givers, while retaining culpability for bribe-takers. Results from our experiment indicate that while this policy has the potential to significantly reduce corrupt practices, weak economic incentives for the bribe-giver, or retaliation by bribe-takers can mitigate the positive disciplining effect of such an implementation. As a result, asymmetric liability on its own may face challenges in the field.

Subfields: Economics and Econometrics, Sociology and Political Science

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/7052d2146d0c4ffb3c91172143425589b2155484

Citations in the corpus

• Reducing bureaucratic corruption: Interdisciplinary perspectives on what works (2018, unknown): “And laboratory experiments such as Abbink et al. (2014) have explored policies that might contribute to whistleblowing, such as lenient punishment for bribers that report bribe-taking public officials.”