Intermediaries and corruption

Surveys of businessmen and anecdotal evidence blame intermediary agents (middlemen hired by corporations and individuals) for increasing corruption in the developing world. Although this problem has gained the attention of policy makers, there has been little formal analysis of it in the economics literature. In a game theoretic model analyzing the interaction between clients, public official and intermediary agents, we find that intermediary agents worsen the impact of corruption and that traditional methods of fighting corruption can actually increase corruption in the presence of intermediary agents. (C) 2007 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.