Gender and

Corruption: Insights
from an Experimental
Analysis
By- VIVI ALATAS
LISA CAMERON
ANANISH CHAUDHARI
NISVAN ERKAL
LATA GANGADHARAN
KANAK CHOURASIYA (23-EC-217)
NAVYA CHAUDHARY (23-EC-216)
FORAM SONI (23-EC-231)
TANYA PILLAI (23-EC-266)
What is Corruption?

Corruption is when someone in power, like a

government official or a business leader, uses their
position for personal gain or to take advantage of
others illegally or unfairly.

In our experiment, corruption is defined as a

situation where two people can act to increase their
own payoff at the expense of a third person. The
transaction that takes place between the two people
is assumed to be illegal. Hence, the third person, the
victim, is allowed to punish them at a cost.
 INTRODUCTION
• Paper objective- Investigating gender differences in attitudes towards corruption.
• 2 recent empirical papers have examined the relationship between gender and
corruption.
 Dollar(2001)
 Swamy (2001)
• Participants receive monetary payments depending on the decisions they make.
• Further the research paper focuses on 2 main points -
 Controlling for culture , women are less tolerant then men.
 Whether there are larger cross country variations in the attitudes of women
towards corruption than in men.
EXPERIMENTAL DESIGN AND PROTOCOL
• Conducted in 4 countries – AUSTRALIA, INDIA, SINGAPORE , INDONESIA.
• “3” Person sequential move game.

• CCDCC

FIRM OFFICIAL CITIZEN

CAN RESPOND TO THE ACT
BRIBE OFFERED TO ACCEPT OR REJECT THE BRIBE. OF CORRUPTION BY
GOVERNMENT OFFICIAL. CHOOSING TO PUNISH
Game begins by bribing the government officials.

B (BRIBE
OFFERED)

By accepting the bribe, the payoffs of the firm

& official increases by 3B.

And, The payoff of the citizen decrease by

amount of B.

Hence , the firm’s net benefit derives to 3B-2.

• Bribe offered and accepted , citizen can choose to punish the official & firm by
an amount P .
• But such punishment is costly for the citizen & reduces the citizens payoffs by
the amount of punishment.
• This reduces the firm & official payoff by 3 times the amount of punishment
chosen by citizens.

ONE SHOT GAME

• No economic benefits to citizens
• Citizens willingness to punish in different countries reveal the difference in
the tolerance level.
• Each subject participates in the experiment only once & played only one role.
The subjects were grouped anonymously to avoid conscious or unconscious
signaling.
PROTOCOLS
LOCATION- 1) University of Melbourne
2) Delhi School of Economics
3)University of Indonesia in Jakarta
4)National University of Singapore
SUBJECTS- Third year UG or PG students
CONTROLS-
1) One of the authors were present where the experiments were ran.
2) Non-computerized experiments
3) Duration of each session- 1hr.
4) Each session- 30 subjects
5)Entered room randomly assigned as firm, official, citizen.
6)Groups located far apart from each other.
7)Game ended: subjects were asked to fill demographic survey.
8) Citizens were asked to explain the motivation of their decision.
9) Decisions entered into spreadsheet: generated their payoffs: payoffs
converted into cash using appropriate conversion rate.
 RESULT
1326 subjects- 596 men (45%)
No. of participants- Australia -642
India- 309
Indonesia - 180
Singapore-195

Reported results based on t-tests & multivariate regression analysis estimated,

binary probit model for the bribe, acceptance & punishment rates.

We conducted experiments with 2 treatments-

Treatment 1: Restricted punishment range for citizens.
Treatment 2: Had a wider punishment range.
3.1 CONTROLLING FOR CULTURE , WOMEN ARE
LESS TOLERANT THAN MEN.
Overall male participant have higher propensity to bribe than female.
Australia –
Male- bribe offered- 92% (High acceptance rate and low punishment rates)
Female- bribe offered -80%
Bribe accepted by-
Male- 91.59%
Female- 80%
PUNISHMENT RATE
Male- punish 49.15% 10%
Female- punish 62.63% Difference

India, Singapore, Indonesia- NO SIGNIFICANT DIFFERENCES

 3.2- Whether there are larger cross-country
variations in the attitudes of women towards
corruption than in the attitudes of men.
MALE-
a) No significant change in propensity to bribe, bribe amount and acceptance
tendency.
b) Some significant change in punishment rate

FEMALE-
c) Significant change in tendency to engage in corruption & to punish corrupt
behaviour.
d) Australian female have the least tolerance towards corruption.
 CONCLUSION
We explored 2 issues-
1) We investigated whether women are less likely to offer bribe & more likely to
punish corrupt behaviour. We find this to be the case in only one of the four
countries studied: AUSTRALIA
2) We investigated whether cross country variation in behaviour is similar for
men & women. The behaviour of the male subjects was shown to be quiet
similar in all four countries. In contrast, the cross country variation in female
behaviour is quiet striking.

These were some of the issues observed while analysing the research paper.