Economics of Corruption 2022:

From October 4-10, 2022 the University of Passau offers the workshop "The Economics of Corruption 2022: Activating intrinsic forces against corruption".

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.

New DFG-research project "Between responsibility and reciprocity - contributions of experimental corruption research "

Since 2021, Prof. Dr. Johann Graf Lambsdorff heads a new research project, funded by the German Research Council (DFG). The project is devoted to experimental research in the lab related to corrupt temptations, responsibility and reciprocity. For details, please approach the DFG's website.

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.

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 J. 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.