Using data from a lab experiment carried out in Kenya, we show that while “legitimate” costs and costs imposed by corruption both deter investment, the latter is no more of a disincentive than the former. We interpret the evidence as consistent with the conclusion that our participants viewed corruption as just another cost of doing business. We also experimented with giving participants in some treatments information about the corruption expectations of participants in previous sessions and the actual extent of corruption in previous sessions. We find some evidence that the objective information actually increased investment without changing the participants’ own expectations regarding corruption. That result is compatible with the idea that revealing the level of corruption changes the descriptive norm and facilitates investment in a corrupt environment.

使用在肯尼亚进行的实验室实验的数据，我们表明，虽然“合法”成本和腐败造成的成本都会阻碍投资，但后者并不比前者更不利。我们将证据解释为与我们的参与者将腐败视为开展业务的另一种成本的结论一致。我们还尝试向某些治疗的参与者提供有关前几节参与者对腐败的期望以及前几节的实际腐败程度的信息。我们发现一些证据表明，客观信息实际上增加了投资，而没有改变参与者自己对腐败的预期。