3 Bureaucratic Corruption and the Rate of Temptation: Do Wages in the Civil Service Affect Corruption, and by How Much?

Abstract

The importance of adequate remuneration in ensuring an honest civil service is widely recognized in the policy debate.1 The issue of optimal government pay or its cost-effectiveness has not yet been settled, however, and a number of recent theoretical papers suggest that ensuring an honest civil service may be prohibitively expensive.2 This paper provides empirical estimates on the magnitude of the effect of civil-service wages on corruption, as a first step toward a cost-benefit analysis of civil-service wage increases.3

  • Collapse
  • Expand