ABSTRACT
Resumen La corrupción es un fenómeno que involucra componentes morales. Sin embargo, este aspecto no se ha visto reflejado en los experimentos de corrupción de manera inequívoca. De los elementos utilizados para señalizar la presencia de normas, tanto las externalidades negativas como el castigo y la introducción de marcos, han arrojado resultados mixtos o nulos, lo que pareciera cuestionar su validez como instrumentos para estudiar la corrupción. En este experimento se buscó evidencia de que el componente moral está presente en un juego de coimas. Se contó con dos grupos independientes de participantes (N = 106) que fueron expuestos al juego en un marco neutro o con opciones que llevaban etiquetas con contenido semántico concreto (por ejemplo, ofrecer un trato corrupto). Por último, para evaluar la connotación moral de los escenarios de toma de decisiones, se solicitó a los participantes que completaran (post-decisión) una escala de maquiavelismo, que ha estado asociada a diferentes aspectos en la toma de decisiones morales. El experimento logró identificar un claro efecto de marco tanto para los jugadores A como para los B. Los resultados muestran que los participantes eligieron las opciones corruptas en menor medida en el tratamiento con el marco cargado que con el marco neutro. Además, las respuestas al juego mostraron diferencias individuales en el nivel de maquiavelismo, ya que puntajes elevados de maquiavelismo estuvieron directamente asociados a ofertas corruptas, aunque solo en el marco cargado.
ABSTRACT
Objective:Based on the framework of reference point contract theory,the experimental economics methodwas used to explore the medical institution managers' motivation and reflection of the profit allocation in vertical integrated?medical service system.Methods:Z-tree software was applied to design the experimental program.40 undergraduate students majoring in health management were recruited as the subjects.Sharing rates and effort levels were collected and calculated by Excel 2007 and SPSS 17.0.Results:The median of sharing rate hospital managers allocated to community health centers?was 35.00％.The median of effort level that community health center directors chose was 8.00.The proportion of sharing rates equal to or less than 50.00％ accounted for 98％.The proportion of the highest effort level was 23.50％.The correlation between sharing rate and effort level was significant(P＜0.05).Conclusion:In the process of establishing vertical integration of medical service system,sharing rates and effort levels were closely related while the community health centers' effort was shading.
ABSTRACT
El estudio de la corrupción (causas, consecuencias y medios efectivos para combatirla) es difícil debido a la naturaleza usualmente secreta del tipo de relaciones involucradas. Recientemente se han comenzado a realizar estudios experimentales sobre situaciones análogas a las de corrupción para complementar otros abordajes empíricos más tradicionales. El problema principal que se ha planteado sobre estos estudios es el de su validez externa, es decir, si los resultados que se obtienen en el laboratorio son extrapolables a situaciones de corrupción reales. Los objetivos de este artículo son, por un lado, resumir la metodología y los principales resultados de esta nueva área de investigación y, por otro, analizar el problema de su validez externa. Se concluye que si bien algunos resultados son alentadores, parece aconsejable una actitud cautelosa con respecto a la generalización de los mismos. Consecuentemente, se sugiere la necesidad de realizar más estudios empíricos para evaluar la validez externa del área.
Some authors conceive corruption as the misuse or abuse of public power for private benefit. Despite not being full agreement about the conceptual definition of the term, there is consensus that corruption is a widespread welfare-reducing phenomenon affecting institutions all over the world (Rose-Ackerman, 2006). The study of corruption (causes, consequences, and effective means of deterrence) is difficult because of the usually secret nature of the relationships involved. Despite the progress made in cross-country econometric analysis of corruption, on the level of the determinants of behaviour there is still lack of reliable knowledge about the factors that affect people’s corruptibility or the institutional features that affect the incidence of corruption (Abbink, 2006). The new field of experimental studies of corruption has recently emerged in an attempt to complement more traditional studies of corruption. In this paper, we first present a brief review of some of the most significant studies in this nascent area, in especial, we focus on introducing the methodology and main results of bribery experiments. In effect, although corruption is a phenomenon that can come in a variety of forms, the offer and acceptance of bribes has been the main focus of interest of this new experimental area. One of the simples ways in which bribery has been modeled in an experiment has been allowing couples of participants to play a Trust Game that can have negative consequences on the other couples (or on passive third parties, depending on the experiment; Abbink et al., 2002; Barr & Serra, 2009; Cameron et al., 2009). Negative externalities happen when the monetary transfer from the first to the second player (the bribe) is reciprocated by the second player choosing an option that favors the first player but harms others. Researchers have also experimentally implemented the possibility of a monetary punishment when the second player chooses the option with negative externalities (Abbink et al., 2002; Cameron et al., 2009). There are two goals that this new area of research pursues. First, researchers try to find out the micro-determinants of corrupt behavior. Second, researchers try to test the efficacy of different anticorruption policies. One of the main problems with experimental studies of corruption is their external validity, that is, the extent to which experimental results can be extrapolated to understand and combat corruption in real life. The second goal of this article is to discuss the external validity issue in experimental studies of corruption from particular examples from bribery studies. We mention two relevant aspects to assess the external validity of studies: on one hand, generalization among different populations, in which the idea is to evaluate the extent to which the same results persist when populations differ between experiments; on the other hand, situational generalization, in which the idea is to evaluate if results persist when the situation or the context varies. It has been argued (e.g., Levit & List, 2007) that the artificial features of the experimental setup (such as the use of abstract language, the detailed characterization of the corrupt transaction and the scrutiny of participants’ actions by researchers) make the extrapolation inference very problematic. We conclude that, although some results seem promissory (especially, very similar findings between laboratory and field experiments; Armantier & Boly, 2011), it seems recommendable to keep a cautious attitude toward the generalization of laboratory findings because there is not enough data on this field yet. Consequently, we stress that the problem of generalization can be approached empirically, and that it is necessary to have more studies which aim at evaluating the external validity of experiments in an area which pretends to be relevant to applied issues.