March 9, 2026

In the NUS research feature “Where Does Corruption Bite Hardest? These Public Services Suffer The Biggest Slowdowns,” Martin Mattsson (NUS Economics) looks at a deceivingly simple but important question: why does corruption often lead to slow and frustrating public services? 

Some economic models treat corruption as little more than money changing hands. In this view, a bribe is simply a payment from a citizen to an official. It is unfair, but it should not necessarily make the system slower than usual. However, real-world evidence shows the opposite. Countries with more corruption tend to have slower bureaucracies, longer waiting times, and more red tape. 

Mattsson’s article, “When does corruption cause red tape? Bribe discrimination under asymmetric information”, published in the Journal of Public Economics (2025), suggests that the answer lies in how much information officials have about the value of a service to the applicant. In some cases, bureaucrats can easily tell how important a service is. For example, a building permit application contains detailed information about the size and cost of the project. From this, an official can roughly estimate how much the applicant stands to gain from approval. 

In situations like this, corruption may simply take the form of a large one-time bribe. The official demands payment but still processes the application quickly. The service itself may not become slower. 

Other services are very different. When someone applies for a passport, an electricity connection, or another routine service, it is much harder for an official to know how urgently the applicant needs it or how much they might be willing to pay. Mattsson argues that this lack of information creates a different kind of corruption. Officials may intentionally slow down the process so that people who want faster service feel pressured to pay more. Delays become a tool for extracting bribes. 

To test this idea, Mattsson analysed data from the World Bank Enterprise Survey, which tracks government-business interactions across 158 countries over nearly two decades. The data supports his theory: corruption is especially associated with slower services in situations where officials have less information about applicants. 

For Singapore, the research highlights why strong anti-corruption institutions matter. Singapore has long taken a strict approach to corruption. The Corrupt Practices Investigation Bureau (CPIB) investigates corruption cases and enforces the Prevention of Corruption Act. These efforts have helped keep public services relatively efficient and predictable. 

Another important factor to be recognized is the use of digital government services. Many applications in Singapore are processed online through platforms such as GovTech and the national services portal LifeSG. When procedures and timelines are standardised and transparent, it becomes much harder for officials to slow things down such as to extract bribes. 

Mattsson’s findings therefore offer a useful, practical insight. Corruption does not only move money from citizens to officials. In many cases, it also creates delays on purpose. Understanding this helps explain why clean and transparent systems are not just fairer, they also make public services faster and more reliable. 

Read the research feature here; and Mattsson’s article here.