Analysis of bribery predictors for the student population. Evidence from Romania and Moldova

Abstract

This study analyzes the bribery acceptance propensity. We used 5072 responses from students in economics (seven universities from the Republic of Moldova and two Romanian regions). We wanted to see communism's impact on this inclination from east to west in territories with Romanian origins. We used purposive sampling, Data Mining, OLS, and Logit regressions with marginal effects and prediction nomograms. Theoretically, we found that proximity to Western countries matters for explaining differences between models. We also discovered strong common influences: competition (negative and mightier for Central-Western Romania), accepting undue advantages, and the immoral act of buying stolen goods (both positive and more potent for Moldova). We additionally identified peculiarities: the desire to become an entrepreneur, anti-democratic attitudes, attitude towards the interventionist role of the state in the economy, nepotism, tax evasion behaviour, inherited sense of responsibility, altruism, and hard work, mother's faith in God, interpersonal trust and individual freedom.