Bribery

As John T. Noonan eloquently reports in Bribes, bribery has been a practice in multiple forms under countless terms throughout the history of humankind. In English, we find the expressions exaction, extortion, facilitating payment, grease money, hush money, kickback, milking, payoff, ransom, slush money, tribute, and others. Bribes can be paid and received in money or in kind and are a species of corruption. Today, bribery and corruption worldwide amount to more than 5% of the global gross domestic product (US$ 2.6 trillion, World Economic Forum), with more than USD 1 trillion paid in bribes each year, according to the World Bank in 2014. As corruption is discussed in a separate entry, this entry focuses on bribery with the following questions:

• 1.
  What is bribery, as distinct ...