We analyze how international anti-corruption rules impact the behavior of multinational firms in promoting sustainable practices. Competition from multinational firms is expected to lower bribe rents and hence corruption in host countries. However, we argue that the competition between domestic and multinational firms is unequal as (only) the latter face greater monitoring and sanction through international anti-corruption regulations. We develop a game theoretic model of bribing to examine the strategic response of firms under conditions of unequal competition. We show that under certain conditions the bribing probability of domestic firms increases when multinational firms facing greater penalties refrain from bribing. We use an agent-based simulation to analyze industries with heterogeneous firms, showing that the optimal strategies converge to the Nash equilibrium, and identify the major drivers of profitability and bribing.

我们分析了国际反腐败规则如何影响跨国公司在促进可持续实践方面的行为。来自跨国公司的竞争预计会降低东道国的贿赂租金，从而降低腐败。然而，我们认为国内和跨国公司之间的竞争是不平等的，因为（仅）后者通过国际反腐败法规面临更大的监督和制裁。我们开发了贿赂的博弈论模型来检验企业在不平等竞争条件下的战略反应。我们表明，在某些条件下，国内企业的贿赂概率增加当面临更严厉处罚的跨国公司避免行贿时。我们使用基于代理的模拟来分析具有异质公司的行业，表明最优策略收敛于纳什均衡，并确定盈利和贿赂的主要驱动因素。