The Culture of Corruption across Generations: An Empirical Study of Bribery Attitudes and Behavior

Is culture a lasting driver of corruption? I study whether normative attitudes toward bribery persist through generational change. To disentangle cultural from institutional causes, I compare individuals who share an institutional environment but whose parents were born abroad. I find evidence of intergenerational persistence: average bribery attitudes in the parental country of ancestry explain variation in bribery attitudes across second-generation immigrants. Consistent with theoretical models, both family-based and community-based mechanisms of attitudinal transmission appear to matter, and cultural persistence appears to be greater in laxer environments. Finally, I find that bribery attitudes are associated with two measures of bribing behavior, highlighting the need to increase attention to cultural factors in corruption scholarship and policy.