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Fnord666 [soylentnews.org] writes:

In many developing countries, the struggle for economic growth is set back by rampant corruption. According to figures in a new study of the issue, people in urban areas of Kenya typically pay bribes 16 times a month. That's a drain on the economy, and it adds a layer of complexity between citizens and essential government services.

While a variety of policy approaches have attempted to limit corruption, it's difficult to track their effectiveness. Now, an international team of researchers has developed a game-theory approach to teasing out the factors that contribute to corruption. Their results show that under the wrong circumstances, a common method of limiting corruption—government transparency—can actually make matters worse.

The foundation of this work is what's called a "public goods game," which measures people's willingness to cooperate. In this game, everyone starts with a pool of cash and is given the opportunity to contribute to a common, public pool. The resulting pool is then multiplied, and its contents are distributed evenly among the players. The group as a whole works out best if everyone cooperates, contributing the maximum amount to the pool. But individuals do best if they freeload: contribute nothing, then take their share of the public pool.

Institutional punishment—essentially a government—can be added to the public goods game. In each round, a "leader" gets to see everyone's contributions and can levy fines against freeloaders. This tends to increase cooperation, but it can also degenerate into rounds of retribution if people take turns as the leader. (Some societies also apparently have issues with random punishment of people who are cooperating.) Past studies have shown that people are often willing to pay a personal cost in order to punish freeloaders.

Source: ArsTechnica [arstechnica.com]

Journal Reference: Nature Human Behaviour, 2017. DOI: 10.1038/s41562-017-0138 [doi.org]

Original Submission