To Serve the Community or Oneself: The Public Servant's Dilemma
Embezzlement of resources is hampering public service delivery throughout the developing world. Research on this issue is hindered by problems of measurement. To overcome these problems, the authors use an economic experiment to investigate the det...
| Main Authors: | , , |
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| Format: | Policy Research Working Paper |
| Language: | English en_US |
| Published: |
World Bank, Washington, D.C.
2013
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| Subjects: | |
| Online Access: | http://hdl.handle.net/10986/14195 |
| Summary: | Embezzlement of resources is hampering
public service delivery throughout the developing world.
Research on this issue is hindered by problems of
measurement. To overcome these problems, the authors use an
economic experiment to investigate the determinants of
corrupt behavior. They focus on three aspects of behavior:
1) Embezzling by public servants. 2) Monitoring effort by
designated monitors. 3) Voting by community members when
provided with an opportunity to select a monitor. The
experiment allows the authors to study the effect of wages,
effort observance, rules for monitor assignment, and
professional norms. Their experimental subjects are
Ethiopian nursing students. The authors find that service
providers who earn more embezzle less, although the effect
is small. Embezzlement is also lower when observance
(associated with the risk of being caught and sanctioned) is
high, and when service providers face an elected, rather
than a randomly selected monitor. Monitors put more effort
into monitoring when they face reelection, and when the
public servant receives a higher wage. Communities reelect
monitors who put more effort into exposing embezzlement.
Framing-whereby players are referred to as "health
workers" and "community members" rather than
by abstract labels-affects neither mean embezzlement nor
mean monitoring effort, but significantly increases the
variance in both. This suggests that different types of
experimental subjects respond differently to the framing,
possibly because they adhere to different norms. |
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