Anti-corruption programs can now target human behavior, not just rules

The World Bank suggests a new way to fight corruption. It wants programs to focus on human behavior, not just laws. This means understanding why people cheat, like incentives and social pressure, to design better interventions.

For decades, anti-corruption efforts focused on making new laws or setting up new institutions. These often failed because they ignored how people actually behave. This paper means development programs can now design interventions that account for human psychology, making integrity the easier choice.