Purpose

Niehaus and Sukhtankar (2013a, 2013b) find that in response to an increase in the public wage rate in National Rural Employment Guarantee Act (NREGA), underpayment of wage and embezzlement rates increase monotonically. This paper aims to investigate theoretically whether the empirical finding of Niehaus and Sukhtankar (2013b) is valid in the long run. The author also verify whether their observation extends to the situation where multiple types of corruption coexist.

Design/methodology/approach

The author builds a theoretical model comprising of three individuals – a government official, a landlord and a representative worker. First, the author defines a no-corruption equilibrium where the official honestly reports the employment period to the government. In a two-stage game, the landlord announces the private wage rate in stage one, followed by the worker deciding on the allocation of time between private and public works and leisure. Then the author considers a single type of corruption where the official embezzles a part of public money by over-reporting the employment period. The landlord-worker game remains the same as before. Finally, the author considers multiple types of corruption where alongside embezzlement, the official takes a bribe from the worker for employing her. Here also, the author considers a two-stage game where in stage one, the official and landlord simultaneously determine embezzlement and bribe rates and the private wage rate, respectively. In stage two, the worker decides on the allocation of time. In both types of corruption, the probability of detection increases with the corruption rate.

Findings

In the case of a single type of corruption, the embezzlement rate behaves nonmonotonically in response to an increase in the public wage rate. A similar kind of result is obtained with multiple types of corruption as well.

Originality/value

First, to the best of the author’s knowledge, no paper prior to this has theoretically modeled corruption in NREGA. Also, the observations of Niehaus and Sukhtankar (2013a, 2013b) is neither valid in the long run nor extend to multiple corruptions.

中文翻译：

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NREGA中的腐败：理论分析

目的

Niehaus 和 Sukhtankar (2013a, 2013b) 发现，随着《国家农村就业保障法》(NREGA) 中公共工资率的提高，少付工资和贪污率单调增加。本文旨在从理论上探讨 Niehaus 和 Sukhtankar (2013b) 的实证发现在长期内是否有效。作者还验证了他们的观察是否延伸到多种腐败并存的情况。

设计/方法/方法

作者建立了一个由三个人组成的理论模型——一个政府官员、一个地主和一个代表工人。首先，作者定义了一个没有腐败的均衡，即官员诚实地向政府报告雇佣期。在两阶段博弈中，房东在第一阶段宣布私人工资率，随后工人决定私人和公共工作和休闲之间的时间分配。然后作者考虑了一种单一类型的腐败，即官员通过多报雇佣期限来挪用部分公共资金。地主与工人的博弈和以前一样。最后，作者考虑了多种类型的腐败，除了贪污，官员还从工人那里收受贿赂以雇用她。这里也是，作者考虑了一个两阶段博弈，在第一阶段，官员和房东同时分别确定贪污贿赂率和私人工资率。在第二阶段，工人决定时间的分配。在这两种类型的损坏中，检测概率随着损坏率的增加而增加。

发现

在单一类型腐败的情况下，贪污率随着公共工资率的增加呈现非单调的行为。使用多种类型的损坏也会获得类似的结果。

原创性/价值

首先，据作者所知，在此之前没有任何论文在理论上模拟了 NREGA 中的腐败。此外，Niehaus 和 Sukhtankar (2013a, 2013b) 的观察从长远来看既不有效，也不延伸到多重腐败。