Speed or Greed? High Wages and Corruption Among Public Servants

Abstract

Scholars maintain that higher wages for public servants would make the public sector more efficient and reduce the abuse of power. This article challenges this idea and suggests that higher wages may actually increase public corruption. We argue that increasing pecuniary incentives for public service might lead public employees to advance their own self-interests and encourage justifications for accepting bribes. We test our theory empirically using 18,800 observations from 58 countries taken from the sixth wave of the World Values Survey. The findings confirm our theory and suggest a positive association between public servants’ wages and the toleration of corruption.

The client side of everyday corruption in Central and Eastern Europe: The case of Chinese migrant entrepreneurs in Romania

“…The governmental headquarters are under close scrutiny by the Romanian government, and the officials working there are supposedly better paid, so they would have less reason to demand bribes (Navot et al, 2016). Xiao fei was furthermore paid by Chinese migrant(s) (entrepreneurs) to gain access to services such as: receiving good and speedy healthcare; proper education for their children; sending packages at the post office; and crossing border control (which will be discussed in more detail below).…”

Civil service management and corruption: What we know and what we don't

“…Alternatively, officials' corruption intent may also be affected by whether officials are able to live from their salaries without having to resort to corrupt income and consider their salaries to be ‘fair’ (van Rijkeghem and Weder ). At the same time, however, higher pecuniary rewards have also been argued to crowd out pro‐social motivation and make officials more corruption prone (Navot et al ).…”

“…Furthermore, for public employees with frequent contact with a fixed set of clients, job stability improves opportunities to build relationships and networks for corrupt transactions (Choi ; De Graaf and Huberts ; Jancsics and Jávor ; Sundström ). On the other hand, however, networks may also be important for corruption containment as they permit potential whistleblowers access to information sharing through informal channels (Navot et al ).…”

“…Alt and Lassen () and Dong and Torgler (), in turn, find a negative correlation in a cross‐section of American states and a panel of Chinese provinces, respectively. A few studies even find a positive correlation between country public wage levels and corruption (Karahan et al ; Navot et al ). Finally, Di Tella and Schargrodsky () find that wage levels are negatively associated with corruption but only when auditing intensity is at intermediate levels.…”

Administrative Processes as an Anti-Corruption Tool? A View from Public Employees in the Baltic States

“…about corruption 'in general' within the organisation. Second, we use public employees as respondents thereby addressing the critique of uninformed respondents associated with perception data from household surveys 50. Although, public employees may not have full information about the level of corruption in their own organization, asking about the respondents own experience with attempts to bribe them no less than 17.7, 40.4 and 36.1 percent in Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania respectively report attempts of bribery.…”