What Do We Talk About When We Talk About Corruption?

In this article, we analyze the behavior of three objective measures of corruption: absolute corruption incidence, relative corruption incidence, and corruption rents. We present a theoretical model of bribery and investment in which these measures of corruption are defined and compared. We then study the changes that arise when key parameters of the model change and show that, under identical circumstances, the behavior of any particular corruption measure can differ completely from the behavior of the other measures. Furthermore, in our model high and low corruption lead to two types of equilibria. We show that the behavior of all three measures can vary substantially when the type of equilibrium changes.