NDLI: On the interpretation of bribery in a laboratory corruption game: moral frames and social norms

Content Provider	Springer Nature Link
Author	Banerjee, Ritwik
Copyright Year	2015
Abstract	Past studies on laboratory corruption games have not been able to find consistent evidence that subjects make “immoral” decisions. A possible reason, and also a critique of laboratory corruption games, is that the experiment may fail to trigger the intended immorality frame in the minds of the participants, leading many to question the very raison d’être of laboratory corruption games. To test this idea, we compare behavior in a harassment bribery game with a strategically identical but neutrally framed ultimatum game. The results show that fewer people, both as briber and bribee, engage in corruption in the bribery frame than in the alternative and the average bribe amount is lesser in the former than in the latter. These suggest that moral costs are indeed at work. A third treatment, which relabels the bribery game in neutral language, indicates that the observed treatment effect arises not from the neutral language of the ultimatum game but from a change in the sense of entitlement between the bribery and ultimatum game frames. To provide further support that the bribery game does measure moral costs, we elicit the shared perceptions of appropriateness of the actions or social norm, under the two frames. We show that the social norm governing the bribery game frame and ultimatum game frame are indeed different and that the perceived sense of social appropriateness plays a crucial role in determining the actual behavior in the two frames. Furthermore, merely relabelling the bribery game in neutral language makes no difference to the social appropriateness norm governing it. This indicates that, just as in the case of actual behavior, the observed difference in social appropriateness norm between bribery game and ultimatum game comes from the difference in entitlement too. Finally, we comment on the external validity of behavior in lab corruption games.
Starting Page	240
Ending Page	267
Page Count	28
File Format	PDF
ISSN	13864157
Journal	Experimental Economics
Volume Number	19
Issue Number	1
e-ISSN	15736938
Language	English
Publisher	Springer US
Publisher Date	2015-05-05
Publisher Place	New York
Access Restriction	One Nation One Subscription (ONOS)
Subject Keyword	Corruption Framing effects Social norms External validity Economic Theory/Quantitative Economics/Mathematical Methods Behavioral/Experimental Economics Microeconomics Game Theory, Economics, Social and Behav. Sciences Operation Research/Decision Theory
Content Type	Text
Resource Type	Article
Subject	Economics, Econometrics and Finance

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1	Ministry of Education (GoI), Department of Higher Education	Sanctioning Authority	https://www.education.gov.in/ict-initiatives
2	Indian Institute of Technology Kharagpur	Host Institute of the Project: The host institute of the project is responsible for providing infrastructure support and hosting the project	https://www.iitkgp.ac.in
3	National Digital Library of India Office, Indian Institute of Technology Kharagpur	The administrative and infrastructural headquarters of the project	Dr. B. Sutradhar bsutra@ndl.gov.in
4	Project PI / Joint PI	Principal Investigator and Joint Principal Investigators of the project	Dr. B. Sutradhar bsutra@ndl.gov.in Prof. Saswat Chakrabarti will be added soon
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