Travis Kelce rushed to pick up Taylor Swift to attend the Kelce family’s Mother’s Day party. The male player didn’t even have time to change his clothes, he was still wearing the outfit he had just recorded in the New Heights episode. However, instead of meeting Taylor, the person who greeted him was Andrea Swift and Taylor’s brother, Austin. They said something that made Travis Kelce freeze in shock

governments and companies around the world. In recent decades, large multinational firms including Siemens, BAe Systems, Lockheed Martin and Halliburton have been the subject of reports about alleged bribery of government officials. Many such cases have been settled with authorities after firms agreed to pay big fines.

But what determines the benefits that companies receive from bribery?

A new study examines nearly 200 reported cases over four decades to find a link between the size of bribes and benefits – with $1 in bribes translating to $6 to $9 increases in market capitalisation. It also punctures some common beliefs, finding no support for such assumptions that the size of the bribe is linked to the size of the benefit to bribing firms or that explicit anti-bribery enforcement reduces the size of the benefits firms receive.

Given that bribery is illegal and undisclosed, most previous studies have made use of questionnaires and surveys of corruption perceptions at a macro level. However, surveyed companies may not answer questionnaires truthfully, and corruption perceptions may be affected by media coverage.