Do Higher Public Wages Reduce Corruption? The Force of Redistributive Norms

A setting is examined where private citizens and public officials interact in pairs for a public service with the option to engage in bribery. Both sides may face a personal moral cost in the event of bribery, while officials also have to deal with redistributive pressures from their kinship network. Over time, the distributions of moral costs among citizens and officials may adjust in response to the incidence of corruption, and this also impacts sharing obligations. Two types of stable long-run equilibria with persistent corruption can arise: one type can be associated with an individualistic society, the other with a collectivist society.