Saturday , November 2 2024
Home / Dirk Niepelt / Certain Bribe Giving Should Be Treated As Legal

Certain Bribe Giving Should Be Treated As Legal

Summary:
In a 2011 paper, Kaushik Basu argued that “harassment bribes”—bribes that people give to officials in order to get what they are legally entitled to—should be treated as legal. The reasoning is as follows: Under the current law [treated as illegal], … once a bribe is given, the bribe giver and the bribe taker become partners in crime. … Under the new law [treated as illegal], when a person gives a bribe, she will try to keep evidence of the act of bribery so that immediately after the bribery she can turn informer and get the bribe taker caught. The upshot of this is not that the bribe taker will get caught but he will not take the bribe in the first place. Thanks to JP Koning.

Topics:
Dirk Niepelt considers the following as important: , , , ,

This could be interesting, too:

Marc Chandler writes Continued Backing Up of US Rates Extend the Greenback’s Gains

Dirk Niepelt writes “Governments are bigger than ever. They are also more useless”

Dirk Niepelt writes The New Keynesian Model and Reality

Dirk Niepelt writes Urban Roadway in America: Land Value

In a 2011 paper, Kaushik Basu argued that “harassment bribes”—bribes that people give to officials in order to get what they are legally entitled to—should be treated as legal. The reasoning is as follows:

Under the current law [treated as illegal], … once a bribe is given, the bribe giver and the bribe taker become partners in crime. …

Under the new law [treated as illegal], when a person gives a bribe, she will try to keep evidence of the act of bribery so that immediately after the bribery she can turn informer and get the bribe taker caught. The upshot of this is not that the bribe taker will get caught but he will not take the bribe in the first place.

Thanks to JP Koning.

Dirk Niepelt
Dirk Niepelt is Director of the Study Center Gerzensee and Professor at the University of Bern. A research fellow at the Centre for Economic Policy Research (CEPR, London), CESifo (Munich) research network member and member of the macroeconomic committee of the Verein für Socialpolitik, he served on the board of the Swiss Society of Economics and Statistics and was an invited professor at the University of Lausanne as well as a visiting professor at the Institute for International Economic Studies (IIES) at Stockholm University.

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *