The Endogenous Choice of Bribe Type under Asymmetric Punishment

As an instrument of corruption control, it has been argued that asymmetric punishment can eliminate harassment bribery if whistle-blowing is cheap and e ective. In a more realistic environment where bribery is most likely to survive and another type of bribery non harassment one coexists, this paper investigates how asymmetric punishment a ects the endogenous choice of bribe type to the bribe-giver. This is analyzed in a setting where bribe size is determined by Nash bargaining, detection of bribery and its type is conducted separately but could be related, and bribery detection rates can be endogenously chosen through whistle-blowing. The feasibility of whistle-blowing has no e ect on the fraction of harassment bribery under symmetric punishment. When it is feasible, however, a switch from symmetric to asymmetric punishment leads to either no di erence or more non-harassment bribery, which is independent of the relation between detection of bribery and non-compliance. The result is robust when the legalization of bribe-giving is not feasible to non-harassment bribes.