In major legal orders such as UK, the U.S., Germany, and France, bribers and recipients face equally severe criminal sanctions. In contrast, countries like China, Russia, and Japan treat the briber more mildly. Given these differences between symmetric and asymmetric punishment regimes for...

We analyse policy makers' incentives to fight corruption under different institutional qualities. We find that 'public officials', even when non-corrupt, significantly distort anti-corruption institutions by choosing a lower detection probability when this probability applies to their own...

I analyze subjects' sensitivity to parametric change that does not affect the theoretical prediction. I find that increasing the value of an illegal transaction to a briber and reducing the penalties to both culprits leads to more bribes being paid but does not affect the cooperation of the...

We study the effects of loaded instructions in a bribery experiment. We find a strong gender effect: men and women react differently to real-world framing. The treatment effect becomes significant once we allow for gender specific coefficients. Our paper contributes to the (small) literature on...

Policies and explicit private incentives designed for self-regarding individuals sometimes are less effective or even counterproductive when they diminish altruism, ethical norms and other social preferences. Evidence from 51 experimental studies indicates that this crowding out effect is...

This study experimentally investigated the effects of providing information on public policy’s future outcomes and emphasizing the information with behavioral economics nudges on budgetary decision-making in Japan’s local governments. Public budget officers consider the policy’s efficiency...

The notion of policy experimentation was proposed to explain China’s adaptability in policy-making process. Heilmann (2008a) proposed ‘decentralised experimentation with ad hoc interference’ as the central feature of policy experimentation. Through installing ‘experimental points’ at...

Red tape is one of the most often-mentioned nuisances of citizens about government. However, there is a dearth in red tape research focusing on citizens. Therefore, the primary goal of this article is to analyze the effect of red tape on citizen satisfaction. The secondary goal is to go beyond...

People often form expectations about others using the lens of their own attitudes (the so-called consensus effect). We study the implications of this for trust and trustworthiness. Trustworthy individuals are more \optimistic" than opportunists and are accordingly less afraid to engage in...

This paper experimentally investigates the bidding behavior in two-stage sequential ascending clock auction (i.e., English auction). The equilibrium given by Milgrom and Weber (2000) predicts that the prices of the two goods sold are exactly the same regardless of the value realization. We, in...