Can Corruption be Studied in the Lab? Comparing a Field and a Lab Experiment

This paper makes an attempt at testing the external validity of corruption experiments by moving from the lab in a developed country, to where it ar- guably matters the most, the …eld in a developing country. More speci…cally, we compare the outcomes of a corruption experiment conducted in the lab in Montreal (Canada), and in the …eld in Ouagadougou (Burkina Faso). The experimental design consists of reproducing a corruption scenario in which a candidate proposes a bribe to a grader in order to obtain a better grade. We …nd the direction and the magnitude of several treatment eects to be statisti- cally indistinguishable between the two environments. In particular, increasing the grader's wage reduces the probability that he will accept the bribe. The outcomes of the lab and …eld experiments, however, dier in some dimensions. In particular, we …nd that increasing the amount of the bribe has no eect in the lab, while it exacerbates corruption in the …eld. Finally, we identify several micro-determinants of corruption including the grader's age, religious fervor, and ability at the grading task.