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Los experimentos económicos de laboratorio como estrategia para el estudio de la corrupción
(pp. 80-97; DOI: 10.23692/iMex.20.6)

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Dr. Esteban Freidin

Esteban Freidin is a researcher from the National Council of Scientific and Technological Research in Argentina (CONICET for the acronym in Spanish), and works at the Southern Institute of Research in Economics and Social Sciences (IIESS for the acronym in Spanish) in Bahía Blanca, Argentina. He obtained his degree in psychology from Buenos Aires University in 2002, and his PhD in Zoology from Oxford University in 2008. His research interests are currently focused on the study of decision-making in situations involving compliance or transgression of social norms. To approach these studies, he relies on the methodology of experimental economics in which participants make decisions in the laboratory with real monetary consequences for themselves and others they interact with. In this manner, he has been studying decision-making in situations involving altruism, cooperation, and corruption, among others.

Corruption is a problem that institutions all over the world experience to a greater or lesser degree. The issue is particularly severe in Latin America and, especially, in Mexico where it mixes with the violence exerted by drug cartels. Given its social costs, it is vital to acquire knowledge about the determinants of corruption and the behavioral factors underlying people´s corruptibility to combat it effectively. Complementing traditional approaches to the study corruption, such as perception surveys and the study of criminal cases, economic experiments in the laboratory emerged as a methodological option to obtain data about the behavioral determinants of people´s corruptibility. In this article, I present an introduction to this field of study associated with experimental and behavioral economics. I focus on experimental studies of bribery, and discuss their main advantages and limitations. Within the positive aspects, I highlight the use of experiments as preliminary means to study the effectiveness of anti-corruption policies such as, for example, the benefits of personnel rotation to destabilize the establishment of trust in relationships prone to corruption. Within the limitations, I discuss the issue of the extent to which experimental results can be generalized to other contexts.

La corrupción es un problema que atraviesan en mayor o en menor medida las instituciones de las diferentes sociedades del mundo. El problema es particularmente severo en Latinoamérica y en especial en México donde se conjuga con la violencia del narcotráfico. Dados sus costos sociales resulta de vital importancia adquirir conocimientos sobre los determinantes de la corrupción para combatirla de manera efectiva. Complementando los abordajes tradicionales de encuestas y estudios de casos, los experimentos económicos de laboratorio se presentan como una opción metodológica para obtener datos acerca de los determinantes comportamentales de la corruptibilidad de las personas. En este artículo, presento una introducción a este campo de estudio que se asocia a la economía experimental y del comportamiento. Pongo el foco en los estudios experimentales de sobornos, y discuto sus principales ventajas y limitaciones. Entre los aspectos positivos destaco la capacidad de los experimentos de laboratorio para servir en la puesta a prueba preliminar de la efectividad de políticas públicas como, por ejemplo, los beneficios de la rotación del personal para desestabilizar el establecimiento de relaciones de confianza proclives a la corrupción. Entre las limitaciones discuto el problema de la capacidad de extrapolación de los resultados experimentales a diferentes contextos.