Combining Top-Down and Bottom-Up Accountability: Evidence from a Bribery Experiment

Monitoring corruption typically relies on top-down interventions acting on the probability of external controls or the severity of punishment. An alternative approach to fighting corruption is to rely on bottom-up monitoring. This article investigates the effectiveness of an accountability system that combines bottom-up monitoring and top-down auditing using data from a specifically designed bribery lab experiment. I compare “public officials”' tendency to ask for bribes under: (1) no monitoring, (2) conventional top-down auditing, and (3) an accountability system that gives citizens the possibility of reporting corrupt officials, knowing that reports lead to top-down auditing with some low probability (the same as in (2)). The experimental results suggest that “combined” accountability systems can be highly effective in curbing corruption, even when citizens' “voice” leads to formal top-down punishment with a relatively low probability.