The Effect of Particularism on Corruption
New article by LCSR associate researcher Valentina Rotondi and her collegue Luca Stanca (University of Milan Bicocca, Italy) titled "The effect of particularism on corruption: Theory and empirical evidence" was published in Journal of Economic Psyhology.
New article by LCSR associate researcher Valentina Rotondi and her collegue Luca Stanca (University of Milan Bicocca, Italy) titled "The effect of particularism on corruption: Theory and empirical evidence" was published in Journal of Economic Psyhology.
The paper investigates the role played by the cultural norm of particularism, as opposed to universalism, for collusive bribery. In the theoretical framework, the act of proposing or demanding a bribe violates a commonly held social norm, thus producing a psychological cost. By lowering this psychological cost, particularism increases the probability of offering or asking for a bribe. The authors test the predictions of the model by using individual-level data for 25 countries from the European Social Survey. Consistent with the theory, particularism is found to have a positive causal effect on the probability of offering a bribe. Overall, the findings indicate that policies aimed at favoring universalism may provide an effective tool to reduce corruption.
The article can be found via the link bellow: