Bribe and punishment: An evolutionary game-theoretic analysis of bribery

Abstract

Harassment bribes, paid by citizens to corrupt officers for services the former are legally entitled to, constitute one of the most widespread forms of corruption in many countries. Nation states have adopted different policies to address this form of corruption. While some countries make both the bribe giver and the bribe taker equally liable for the crime, others impose a larger penalty on corrupt officers. We examine the consequences of asymmetric and symmetric penalties by developing deterministic and stochastic evolutionary game-theoretic models of bribery. We find that the asymmetric penalty scheme can lead to a reduction in incidents of bribery. However, the extent of reduction depends on how the players update their strategies over time. If the interacting members change their strategies with a probability proportional to the payoff of the alternative strategy option, the reduction in incidents of bribery is less pronounced. Our results indicate that changing from a symmetric to an asymmetric penalty scheme may not suffice in achieving significant reductions in incidents of harassment bribery.