Economics of Corruption 2019: Overcoming Behavioral Impediments to Honesty

From September 22-29, 2019 the University of Passau offers the workshop "The Economics of Corruption 2019".

The event is targeted towards PhD and master-students with an interest in experimental and behavioral approaches to corruption and reform. More details are available here.

Blog by the Journal "Public Administration Review"

A new blog "Corruption: A Bully Pulpit Symposium" by the Journal "Public Administration Review" has published 24 short contributions, each one delivering a novel idea on how to fight corruption (or criticising the standard methods). Please approach the website for unlimited access. Prof. Graf Lambsdorff contributed ideas on "Fighting Corruption with Insights from Behavioral Science". All blogs are happy to receive comments!

Experimental Publication on Tax Evasion in the Journal of Economic Psychology

Susanna Grundmann and Johann Graf Lambsdorff detect the corrupting power of income in a 2017 publication in the Journal of Economic Psychology titled "How income and tax rates provoke cheating – An experimental investigation of tax morale". They show that morale decreases with income but not with the tax range. Thus, higher taxes can compensate for the dismal distributional effect arising from rich people cheating more. Watch our Youtube-Video on the study.

New Discussion Paper encourages Behavioral Science for Fighting Corruption

Some methods aimed at preventing corruption are too costly or even counterproductive. Behavioral science has identified regularities in human behavior that can provide us with an integrating theoretical model and help us design better policies. Please find here a new discussion paper that will stir some debate. Preventing Corruption by Promoting Trust – Insights from Behavioral Science

by JOHANN GRAF LAMBSDORFF

ABSTRACT
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 study illustrates this, using six examples, relating to the four-eyes principle, procurement, development aid, compliance statements, leniency and the tone at the top. Increasingly, behavioral science has provided insights on how to improve policies. These insights, along with experimental evidence, are applied to the six examples to provide direction to behaviorally better informed policies.