Title: How Corruption Prevails: A Laboratory Experiment

Speaker: Lei Mao
Abstract: Previous research has found the contagion effect in corruption, nevertheless the mechanisms underlying the contamination of corruption remain unexplored. In this paper, we varied various kinds of information relevant to corruption, which are the number (breath)/ the size(depth)/the maximum amount of corruption, exposed to participants in a laboratory experiment to testify how the salience of different information affects participants’ decisions to engage in corruption. Our results show that participants are more likely to provide a bribe and are more willing to provide a greater amount of bribe after they are informed the information on the maximum amount of corruption has limited effect. In addition, emotion data collected in the experiment reveal that the intensity of guilt accounts for participants’ decision to involve in corruption. Our findings support that the channel of the contamination of corruption should attribute the feeling of guilt related to social norms rather than a higher possibility to find a corrupt partner.

About Lei Mao: Professo Lei Mao is an associate professor in the CUFE. His research focuses on Experimental Economics, Behavior Economics, Labor Economics and Incentive Theory.

Date: November 21, 2017

Time: 15:40-16:50 PM

Location: Room 608, Academic Hall, CUFE