Law backed by non-deterrent sanctions (mild law) has been hypothesized to achieve compliance because of norm activation. We experimentally investigate the effects of mild law in the provision of public goods by comparing it to severe law (deterrent sanctions) and no law. The results show that...

In recent years the topic of corruption has attracted a great deal of attention. However, there is still a lack of empirical evidence about the determinants of corruption at the micro level. Therefore we explore in detail the impact of political interest using three different proxies....

We argue that the decision to bribe bureaucrats depends on the frequency of corruption within a society. We provide a behavioral model to explain this conduct: engaging in corruption results in a disutility of guilt. This implies that people observe a lower probability to be involved in...

With complementary Chinese data sets and alternative corruption measures, we explore the consequences of corruption. Adopting a novel approach we provide evidence that corruption can have both, positive and negative effects, on economic development. The overall impact of corruption might be the...

We explore theoretically and empirically whether social interaction, including local and global interaction, influences the incidence of corruption. We first present an interaction-based model on corruption that predicts that the level of corruption is positively associated with social...

The ambiguous phenomenon of corruption has long been the cause of great theoretical debate in economics. By using Structural Equation Modelling, with the two types of corruption as a latent variable, this paper employs causal and indicative variables specific to the Latin American region to test...

We analyze the behavior of game-show contestants who play a one-shot game called Friend or Foe. While it is a weakly dominant strategy not to cooperate, almost half the contestants on the show choose to play ?friend.? Remarkably, the behavior of contestants remains uncha nged even when stakes...

This study examines the financing choices of firms operating in a weak institutional environment. We argue that in relationship-based systems, global financing and political connections are substitutes: Well-connected firms are less likely to access foreign capital markets because (state-owned)...

The intention of this paper is to analyze religiosity as a factor that potentially affects tax morale. For this purpose, a multivariate analysis has been done with data from the World Values Survey 1995- 1997, covering more than thirty countries at the individual level. Several variables, such...

This paper has a novel framework analysing what shapes superstition in a multivariate analysis. The results indicate that socio-demographic and socio-economic variables matter. The results also indicate that there is a certain concurrence between churches and superstitious beliefs. In most of...