When does corruption cause red tape? Bribe discrimination under asymmetric information
中文摘要
在何种情况下腐败会造成低效率，而在何种情况下贿赂仅仅是转移？我提出了一个修正的垄断价格歧视模型，以说明腐败在何种情况下会导致政企互动中的行政负担无效率地过高。该模型凸显了官僚掌握的关于企业为避免行政负担的支付意愿（WTP）的信息、以及官僚是否决定收集这些信息的重要性。如果官僚决定调查企业并了解其支付意愿，那么在完全价格（即贿赂）歧视下，政企互动中的行政负担将处于帕累托有效水平。如果调查成本过高，政府官员就会转而利用繁文缛节，从支付意愿较高的企业榨取更多贿赂，从而导致行政负担无效率地过高。我表明，该模型的预测与企业调查（Enterprise Survey）18年间覆盖158个国家的186,277次政企互动数据一致。我发现，当政府官员掌握的企业支付意愿信息较少时，腐败会加重行政负担，并且这种影响对支付意愿较低的企业更大。这对于如何减轻行政负担、以及应将反腐败工作重点置于何处具有多项政策启示。
Abstract
Under what circumstances does corruption cause inefficiencies, and when are bribes merely transfers? I propose a modified monopoly price discrimination model that shows under what circumstances corruption leads to an inefficiently high administrative burden in government-firm interactions. The model highlights the importance of the information the bureaucrat has regarding the firms’ willingness to pay (WTP) to avoid administrative burden and the bureaucrat’s decision to gather this information. The government-firm interaction will have a Pareto efficient level of administrative burden with perfect price (i.e., bribe) discrimination if the bureaucrat decides to investigate the firm and learn its WTP. If the cost of investigation is too high, the government official instead uses red tape to extract more bribes from firms with higher WTP, causing inefficiently high levels of administrative burden. I show that the model’s predictions are consistent with data from 186,277 government-firm interactions from 18 years of the Enterprise Survey covering 158 countries. I find that corruption leads to increased administrative burden when government officials have less information about the firm’s WTP and that the effect is larger for firms with a low WTP. This has several policy implications for how to reduce administrative burden and where to focus anti-corruption efforts.