Bribing behaviour and sample selection: Evidence from post-socialist countries and Western Europe

We study the individual-level determinants of bribing public officials. Particular attention is paid to the issue of respondents' non-random selection into contact with public officials, which may result in biased estimates. Data come from the 2010 Life in Transition Survey, covering 30 post-socialist and five Western European countries. The results suggest that the elderly tend to be less likely to bribe public officials, while people with higher income and, especially, low trust in public institutions are more likely to bribe. Several determinants of bribery - ethnic minority status, the degree of urbanisation, social trust - are context specific, i.e. they change signs or are statistically significant according to the geographical region or the type of public official. The results show that not accounting for sample selection effects may produce a bias in estimated coefficients.