We use data on households’ bribery of public officials in Peru and Uganda to analyze the distribution by income of the burden of bribery, the mechanisms leading to it, and the payoffs to bribery. We show the burden of bribery is not borne disproportionately by the poor. Among bribers, the poor...

The lack of adoption of new farming technologies despite known benefits is a well-documented phenomenon in development economics. In addition to a number of market constraints, risk aversion predominates the discussion of behavioral determinants of technology adoption. We hypothesize that...

We provide a theoretical framework for understanding when an official angles for a bribe, when a client pays, and the payoffs to the client's decision. We test this framework using a new data set on bribery of Peruvian public officials by households. The theory predicts that bribery is more...