Risk Attitude, Beliefs, and Information in a Corruption Game - An Experimental Analysis
20 Pages Posted: 29 Oct 2012
Date Written: July 10, 2012
Abstract
For our experiment on corruption, we designed a coordination game to model the influence of risk attitudes, beliefs, and information on behavioral choices and determined the equilibria. We observed that the risk attitude of the participant failed to explain their choices between corrupt and non-corrupt behavior. Instead, their beliefs appeared to be a better predictor of whether or not they would opt for the corrupt alternative. Furthermore, varying the quantity of information available to the players (modeled by changing the degree of uncertainty) provided additional insight into the players’ propensity to engage in corrupt behavior. The experimental results show that a higher degree of uncertainty in the informational setting reduces corruption.
Keywords: corruption, game theory, experiment, risk attitude, beliefs
JEL Classification: D73, K42, C91, C92
Suggested Citation: Suggested Citation