Corrupt arrangements are characterized by a high risk of opportunism. Moreover, denunciation and extortion add another layer of uncertainty for participants in corrupt transactions. This paper demonstrates how legislators can use an asymmetric design of criminal sanctions to amplify these...

Recent empirical studies claim that, in addition to levels of corruption, investors are deterred by its unpredictability. I claim instead that it is petty corruption that deters investors. I employ seven subcomponents of corruption for a sample of 102 countries that appear in the 2003 Global...

The Transparency International Corruption Perceptions Index is a composite index with a focus on cross-section information. The usage of the data in the form of time series has been discouraged in the past, due to changes in the composition of sources. Basing assessments only on sources that...

Data on the perceived levels of corruption from a cross-section of countries has been introduced fruitfully into recent empirical research. This chapter reviews studies on the consequences and causes of corruption. It includes research on the impact of corruption on investment, GDP,...

The ratio of money demand to GDP may increase with portfolio demand, monetization, and a deeper division of labor. Using a cross-section approach to money demand for 126 countries this study shows that the share of agriculture, life expectancy at birth, openness, and trust in the banking system...

This paper processes responses from households in 66 countries to address differences in the extent to which bribes and gifts are considered acceptable. Levels of acceptance differ substantially from one country to another, but they do not conform to popular expectations: Respondents in rich,...

This study embeds transaction cost analysis into a Law and Economics model to produce general recommendations on how to deter bribery. Governments may deter bribery either by high penalties and risks of detection, potentially supported by leniency given to those who report their infraction...

Governments and private firms try to contain corruption among their staff mostly in a top-down, rules-based approach. They limit discretion, increase monitoring or impose harsher penalties. Principles-based, bottom-up approaches to anticorruption, instead, emphasize the importance of value...

Governments, companies and organizations across the world have implemented strategies for countering corruption. A growing body of so-called best practice has emerged in the last 20 years. But some approaches have been criticized for being costly, ineffective or even counterproductive. This...

We run a gift-exchange experiment under conditions of monetary neutrality: aggregate changes in nominal wages leave aggregate real wages unchanged. To achieve this, an employee's real wage is determined by the nominal wage divided by the price level (the average wages paid to others). Recent...