Opportunistic Behaviour

Abstract

Reading the newspapers and listening to the media news channels for the last decade, one makes the observation that cheating has increased, or at least accusations of such behaviour. This is commonly called “corruption”, but there are several kinds of cheating to be distinguished and analysed apart. Two approaches to cheating are conceivable. First, the micro approach attempts to account for why individual persons cheat – the reason and their calculation of benefits and costs. Here, we can now draw upon new results in game theory. Second, in the macro approach one tries to explain or understand why cheating seems to augment over the entire society, in both the public and private sectors. This paper looks at one form of cheating more closely, namely corruption, as well as suggests a few hypotheses about the increase in so-called “affairs” in several capitalist economies.