The Economic Analysis Of Bribery

Bribery is taken as a crime in the criminal law. Traditional criminal law theory explains that bribery crime brings the huge social harmfulness, while in economics theory, there are various reasons to take the bribery crime as guilty and can also find more effective ways to prevent bribery。In the first part of this article, the author try to seek economic reasons for bribery as a crime:First, Bribery has large negative externalities, causing power market disorder and chaos, damage the value of power and influence the stability of the society and the prosperity of the country. Second, bribery will bring unnecessary social transaction costs, transfer the social resources from production areas to non-productive field, causing the social efficiency loss and waste of resources. Third, Bribery will corrupt the management structure of the country, lure rent-seeking behavior, endanger the whole social operation mechanism and the national dominant order.In the second part, I start from the internal economic structure of the bribery, state that bribery is essentially an underground trade between criminals, in the deal, the two sides respective from their own interests, bargain to seek a satisfied cooperative solution. In this process, the rational bribers will carefully consider the bribery crimes in the expenses for the cost, the profits and the risk。After a comparison among these factors, they will determine whether to crime. The information they get may be different, and it also can cause different decision. The pacing factors are the chance to be caught and the punishment. The change of these factors will affect the feasibility of the bribery crime and criminal utility size they may obtain.In the third part, I try to make some suggestions and measures to combat and prevent bribery:From the point of view of power, we should promote political restructuring, clear lines of authority, allocate the power reasonably to limit the crime on root. From the point view of law, we should promote the legislative and the judicial system reform and innovation, increase resources for the fight against and the prevention of bribery, enforced the blow for the bribery. From the point view of criminals, we should strengthen the supervision and restraint, take comprehensive measures to indirectly change bribery crime environment, and compress the living space of bribery. Therefore, it is necessary to separate and limit the power, reform and innovate the law system, take some measures on the criminals to make it effective to reduce and prevent bribery, and bring its social harmfulness down to the smallest degree.