Corruption undermines government effectiveness and performance pay may be used as a "legal bribe" to encourage bureaucrats to act honestly. However, if performance pay is awarded based on loyalty rather than performance, its use may aggravate corruption rather than reduce it. Collusion is facilitated when patronage crowds out merit in the public sector recruitment process, and this study, therefore, tests whether the relationship between performance pay and corruption is conditioned by patronage-based recruitment. A model of corruption is estimated using data from an expert survey of performance pay usage in government in over 100 countries and both a survey-based measure of patronage and a multi-source patronage risk index. A series of cross-country regressions suggest that the effect of performance pay on corruption is negative when patronage is low but either non-significant or positive in countries where patronage pervades the recruitment process. This study demonstrates how a popular anti-corruption reform may interact with competing incentives embedded in the context of implementation to worsen corruption.

腐败破坏了政府的效力，绩效工资可能被用作鼓励官僚诚实行事的“法律贿赂”。但是，如果绩效工资是根据忠诚度而不是绩效来授予的，则其使用可能会加剧腐败而不是减少腐败。当光顾者在公共部门的招聘过程中排挤出功时，就会促进勾结，因此，本研究测试了绩效薪酬与腐败之间的关系是否受到以光顾者为基础的招聘的制约。使用来自100多个国家/地区的政府绩效工资使用情况的专家调查数据以及基于调查的赞助量和多种来源的赞助风险指数，可以估算出腐败模型。一系列的跨国回归表明，当光顾人数少时，绩效工资对腐败的影响是负面的，而在光顾到位的招聘过程中，国家的薪酬表现却不显着或正面。这项研究表明，流行的反腐败改革如何与实施中嵌入的竞争性激励机制相互作用，从而加剧腐败。