Search results

Lab studies on culture and corruption have led to some puzzling, contradictory results. This chapter begins with a discussion of nonexperimental work in this area and evaluates the experimental findings in the context of earlier research. We sketch out the channels through which culture interacts with corruption (i.e., through institutions and social norms) and argue that discrepancies in experimental results may be due to differences in design (including repetition or unobserved variation in beliefs) or due to differences in the response to punishment across societies. In addition to exploring design-based reasons for previous contradictory findings, avenues for future research include: behavioral responses to different types of externalities; replicating results in different countries; and utilizing the lab to formulate effective anticorruption measures.

Recent research suggests that prosocial organizations are likely to have more prosocial employees, and that this match plays a significant role in organization contracting practices and productivity – for example, in government. Evidence suggests that selection plays a role: prosocial employees are more likely to join prosocial organizations. In this paper, we ask whether prosocial behavior increases with tenure in prosocial organizations. Using a unique sample of nearly 300 mid-career Indonesian public officials, we find that subjects with longer tenure in the public sector exhibit greater prosocial behavior.

In Chapter 2, Ananish Chaudhuri surveys the empirical evidence on the existence of gender differences in individuals’ propensity to engage in corruption. While the chapter begins with a review of the findings generated by cross-country studies, the main focus of the discussion is in the insights provided by laboratory experiments specifically designed to test for gender differentials in corrupt transactions. According to the carefully conducted survey of the literature, the existing experimental evidence suggests that females are either equally or less willing to engage in corruption than males; there is very little evidence that women behave more corruptly than men. The author discusses possible reasons for gender differentials in corrupt behavior, such as risk aversion and preferences for reciprocation. Finally, Chaudhuri emphasizes that gender effects are more likely to be observed in studies conducted in developed countries and calls for further research to be conducted in developing countries, with the aim of shedding light on the relationships between gender differences in corrupt behavior and the cultural background of the experimental participants.

This paper replicates four highly cited, classic lab experimental studies in the provision of public goods. The studies consider the impact of marginal per capita return and group size; framing (as donating to or taking from the public good); the role of confusion in the public goods game; and the effectiveness of peer punishment. Considerable attention has focused recently on the problem of publication bias, selective reporting, and the importance of research transparency in social sciences. Replication is at the core of any scientific process and replication studies offer an opportunity to reevaluate, confirm or falsify previous findings. This paper illustrates the value of replication in experimental economics. The experiments were conducted as class projects for a PhD course in experimental economics, and follow exact instructions from the original studies and current standard protocols for lab experiments in economics. Most results show the same pattern as the original studies, but in all cases with smaller treatment effects and lower statistical significance, sometimes falling below accepted levels of significance. In addition, we document a “Texas effect,” with subjects consistently exhibiting higher levels of contributions and lower free-riding than in the original studies. This research offers new evidence on the attenuation effect in replications, well documented in other disciplines and from which experimental economics is not immune. It also opens the discussion over the influence of unobserved heterogeneity in institutional environments and subject pools that can affect lab results.