The evolution of corruption and development in transitional economies: Evidence from China

It is widely accepted in the literature, that the level of corruption is negatively and robustly related to economic development. However, skeptics argue that for transitional economies, this relationship may not hold. Economic reform loosens up the control of local officials and can increase corruption; Corruption and per capita income can be positively related. Using panel provincial data of China from 1995 to 2014 on prosecuted cases of corruption, we discover that during the early phase of China’s economic reform (during Zhu Rongji and Hu-Wen administrations), a positive short-run relationship is indeed observed. But, there is a robust negative long-run cointegration relationship between corruption and per capita income. The development of the market economy improves private wage and income in the long-run. The relatively inefficient and low returns to ordinary corruption cannot compete with rising market returns, which lead to dwindling corruption. However, the share of major corruption cases is increasing over time to be able to compete with rising market wages.     

Exposure to corruption and political participation: Evidence from Italian municipalities

This paper aims to study the effects of exposure to corruption on all the aspects of political participation. Focusing on Italian municipalities in the period 1999–2014, we generate a daily and local measure of exposure to corruption, screening newspaper articles of the main Italian press agency. We concentrate on local elections and, in an event-study analysis, we find three main results. First, corruption exposure affects citizens' participation in election by reducing voter turnout. Second, corruption impacts on politicians’ participation: the number of candidates and electoral lists decreases after a scandal and candidates with political tenure are more likely to run. Finally, these changes affect local political outcomes as tenured politicians are more likely to be elected, while freshmen lose ground. These results suggest that exposure to corruption has general and negative effects on political participation, leading people to lose interest in politics.     

How do electoral and voice accountability affect corruption? Experimental evidence from Egypt

How far does democracy decrease corruption? And which specific aspects of democracy help generate such effects? Corruption is famously one of the strongest obstacles to social and economic development. Whereas there has been extensive research identifying the causes of corruption, there is little experimental research on the impact of political institutions on corruption using designs that control for significant confounders. This paper uses a series of laboratory experiments conducted in 2013 Egypt in which a government official decides whether to spend tax revenues paid by subjects on a self-serving good or a good that benefits everyone equally. We have two experimental manipulations: (a) whether the official is electorally accountable to subjects or not; (b) whether subjects could send messages of protests to the official (and one another). We find evidence that electoral accountability does decrease the probability of the official choosing the self-serving good by 17% whereas voice accountability generates such outcome only in the authoritarian treatment (a reduction of corruption by 29%). We also find suggestive evidence that, in the authoritarian treatment, the likelihood of funding the self-serving good decreases by 27% when taxes paid by citizens fall short of the official’s threshold. Our contribution to the literature is two-fold: (a) we are able to single out the effect of specific democratic mechanisms on government corruption; (b) we test outcomes of democratic mechanisms on a traditionally understudied subject pool.     

ON THE DETERMINANTS OF EDUCATIONAL CORRUPTION: THE CASE OF UKRAINE

This article utilizes a unique data set to examine the relationship between a group of potential explanatory variables and educational corruption in Ukraine. Our corruption controls include bribing on exams, on term papers, for credit, and for university admission. We use a robust nonparametric approach in order to estimate the probability of bribing across the four different categories. This approach is shown to be robust to a variety of different types of endogeneity often encountered under commonly assumed parametric specifications. Our main findings indicate that corruption perceptions, past bribing behavior, and the perceived criminality of bribery are significant factors for all four categories of bribery. From a policy perspective, we argue that when bribe control enforcement is difficult, anti‐corruption education programs targeting social perceptions of corruption could be appropriate. (JEL K42, J16, C14)     

政府规模、市场化与地区腐败

Using a panel data at the provincial level during the period of 1989–2004, this paper examines the effects of social and economic factors such as government scale, privatization, openness, and education on regional corruption. Applying a fixed-effect model and IV estimation, we find that government size positively affects the incidence rate of corruption, and the effect becomes larger with the increase in the size of the core department of the government. 1% increase in the core department of the government leads to a 0.68%–1% increase in the number of corruption cases. While the proportion of FDI is positively associated with the corruption of regional officials, the ratio of the import and export trade to GDP is negatively associated with corruption. The impact of privatization on corruption is ambiguous. We also identify the significant impacts of the size and structure of the government expenditure on corruption. __________ Translated from Jingji Yanjiu 经济研究 (Economic Research Journal), 2008, (11): 16–26     

The effects of federal regulations on corruption in U.S. States

Using the newly constructed Federal Regulation and State Enterprise Index (FRASE Index) to measure the federal regulations and the existing Corruption Convictions Index (CCI), we investigate the effects of federal regulations on corruption in U.S. states. Controlling for several demographic and economic variables including the Fraser Institute’s Economic Freedom Index (EFI), which measures the size and scope of government in U.S. states, we find a positive and statistically significant relationship between federal regulations and corruption. Our findings have important policy implications. A 1 standard deviation increase in FRASE Index causes CCI to increase by approximately 0.5 standard deviations. Standardized coefficient of EFI is also approximately equal to 0.5. In other words, it is possible to mitigate the effects of regulations at the federal level by reducing the size and the scope of the government at the state level.     

The growth–distribution nexus in a mixed regime of education with a status motive: On the macroeconomics of the welfare state

We develop a growth model with human capital accumulation to study the effects of status-driven motivation on individuals' choice between public or private education. This choice interacts with and exacerbates the effects of status, with implications for growth and distribution. More motivated individuals work harder and choose private education. In a majority voting/median voter setup, individuals choose a public education size for which there is no trade-off between long-term growth and inequality. We also highlight the conflict of interest between individuals with respect to the size of the public education sector and the tax rate that supports it. We thus highlight important interactions between the macroeconomy, social attitudes and educational institutions and derive results of interest in a variety contexts. We end by drawing policy conclusions among which, the idea that in democracies, higher growth and lower inequality are mutually compatible when the government promotes public education.     

WTO membership and corruption

Despite widespread belief that accession process and formal membership to the World Trade Organization (WTO) improve the quality of governance within a country, there is no convincing empirical evidence to substantiate this thought. Here, I investigate whether the WTO status of a country has a causal effect on firm-level reports of political corruption using a nonparametric partial identification approach to bound the average treatment effects (ATEs). I also analyze conditional ATEs to explore various sources of potential heterogeneity. Contrary to popular belief, I find that WTO membership is likely to have no causal effect on domestic corruption overall. And if anything, it is likely to increase corrupt practices, particularly among firms that are established post WTO membership and those that are government owned.     

Economic growth,corruption and tax evasion

In this paper, we explore tax revenues in a regime of widespread corruption in a growth model. We develop a Ramsey model of economic growth with a rival but non-excludable public good which is financed by taxes which can be evaded via corrupt tax inspectors. We prove that the relationship between the tax rate and tax collection, in a dynamic framework, is not unique, but is different depending on the relevance of the “shame effect”. We show that in all three cases — “low, middle and high shame” countries, the growth rate increases as the tax rate increases up to a threshold value, after which the growth rate begins to decrease as the tax rate increases. But, for intermediate tax rates, the rate of growth for “low shame” countries is lower than that of “uniform shame” countries which is, in turn, lower than that of “high shame” countries. This happens because the growth rate is more sensitive to variations of t in an honest country rather than in a corrupt country.     

Financial Liberalization and Institutional Development

This study empirically analyzes the effects of de jure financial openness on institutional quality as captured by indicators on investment risk, corruption level, impartiality of judiciary system, and the effectiveness of bureaucracy. We show that a higher degree of financial openness improves institutional quality mainly by reducing investment risks. We also study the effect of a single liberalization reform. Again, we find evidence for the beneficial impact of financial liberalization with the exception of corruption. We additionally show that the benign consequences of financial opening for the institutional development are even larger if financial liberalization is supported by simultaneous political liberalization, while financial deregulation in former socialist countries tends to worsen institutional quality.     

Dissertation abstract: “Essays in applied economics on the intervention of a third player in agency relationships”

Agency theory has established that appropriate incentives can reconcile the diverging interests of the principal and the agent. Focusing on three applications, this dissertation evaluates the empirical relevance of these results when a third party interacts with the primary contract. The analyses provided rely on either laboratory or natural experiments. First, corruption is analyzed as a two-contract situation: a delegation contract between a Principal and an Agent and a corruption pact concluded between this Agent and a third player, called Briber. A survey of the recent microeconomic literature on corruption first highlights how corruption behavior results from the properties of those two agreements. We thereafter show that the Agent faces a conflict in reciprocities due to those two conflicting agreements. The resulting delegation effect, supported by observed behavior in our three-player experimental game, could account for the deterrence effect of wages on corruption. Second, health care is governed by contradictory objectives: patients are mainly concerned with the health provided, whereas containing health care costs is the primary goal of health care administrators. We provide further insights into the ability of incentives to balance these two competing objectives. In this matter, our theoretical and econometric analysis evaluates how a new mixed compensation scheme, introduced in Quebec in 1999 as an alternative to fee-for-services, has affected physicians’ practice patterns. Free switching is shown to be an essential feature of the reform, since it implements screening between physicians. Finally, the demand for underground work departs from the traditional Beckerian approach to illegal behavior, due to the dependence of benefits from illegality on competitors’ behavior. We set up a theoretical model in which the demand for underground work from all producers competing on the same output market is analyzed simultaneously. We first show that competition drastically undermines the individual benefits of tax evasion. At equilibrium, each firm nonetheless chooses evasion with a positive probability, strictly lower than one. This Bertrand curse could then account for the “tax evasion puzzle” i.e. the overprediction of evasion in models that ignore market interactions. We thereafter show that allowing firms to denounce competitors’ evasion is not likely to solve this curse—by providing a credible threat against price cuts, it fosters illegal work. Empirical evidence from a laboratory experiment confirms these predictions. Without denunciation, experimental firms often choose evasion whereas evasion benefits are canceled out by competition. When introduced, denunciation is rarely used by firms, but the threat makes evasion profitable. JEL Classification K42, I18, D21, C25, C91     

Non-random selection into entrepreneurship in the realm of government decentralization and corruption

For the past few decades, the extant literature on corruption has primarily relied on firm-level survey measures – for example, those from the World Bank – to explore the relevant empirical determinants of this illegal practice. However, these studies have potentially overlooked an underlying econometric problem – namely, non-random selection into entrepreneurship – that may bias all the estimated determinants to date if ignored in the analysis. Here, I assess this possibility by applying the traditional Heckman (1979) correction procedure in a novel way: using two different samples. I use my proposed solution in the context of government decentralization and firm-level corruption as a plausible application. Specifically, I revisit the question of the causal impact of government decentralization on firm-level corruption when the underlying sample selection issue is addressed. Results are worth noting. I find reasonable evidence of selection bias. On controlling for this, fiscal decentralization substantially decreases firm-level bribery, in general. This finding is in contradiction to the results reported by naive estimation strategies where the sample selection issue is completely ignored.     

Why a clean politician supports dirty politics: A game-theoretical explanation for the persistence of political corruption

Using a theoretical model of repeated political competition among two career politicians, I study the incentives of both the corrupt and clean politicians not to adopt a fully effective reform targeting political corruption. In the setup I study, each politician can credibly adopt the reform as part of his policy platform in the elections. Yet, when the level of political corruption is high, neither politician does so in a Nash Equilibrium. Intuitively, political corruption changes the zero-sum nature of political competition: the reform eliminates the illegal rents of the corrupt candidate and the competitive advantage of the clean candidate.     

Corruption and public spending on education and health

Existing country and regional studies show that the effect of corruption on public spending on health and education is mixed. This letter reveals that the effect of corruption on health and education spending is significant and non-linear in a panel of 134 countries observed over two decades: For an overwhelming majority of countries, corruption has a positive effect on the share of public resources spent on public health and a negative effect in the case of education. The results presented are robust to several econometric challenges ignored in the literature.     

On the interpretation of bribery in a laboratory corruption game: moral frames and social norms

Past studies on laboratory corruption games have not been able to find consistent evidence that subjects make “immoral” decisions. A possible reason, and also a critique of laboratory corruption games, is that the experiment may fail to trigger the intended immorality frame in the minds of the participants, leading many to question the very raison d’être of laboratory corruption games. To test this idea, we compare behavior in a harassment bribery game with a strategically identical but neutrally framed ultimatum game. The results show that fewer people, both as briber and bribee, engage in corruption in the bribery frame than in the alternative and the average bribe amount is lesser in the former than in the latter. These suggest that moral costs are indeed at work. A third treatment, which relabels the bribery game in neutral language, indicates that the observed treatment effect arises not from the neutral language of the ultimatum game but from a change in the sense of entitlement between the bribery and ultimatum game frames. To provide further support that the bribery game does measure moral costs, we elicit the shared perceptions of appropriateness of the actions or social norm, under the two frames. We show that the social norm governing the bribery game frame and ultimatum game frame are indeed different and that the perceived sense of social appropriateness plays a crucial role in determining the actual behavior in the two frames. Furthermore, merely relabelling the bribery game in neutral language makes no difference to the social appropriateness norm governing it. This indicates that, just as in the case of actual behavior, the observed difference in social appropriateness norm between bribery game and ultimatum game comes from the difference in entitlement too. Finally, we comment on the external validity of behavior in lab corruption games.     

Does corruption rule the auditor's soul? Examining the auditors' attitude toward accepting corruption behaviors

This study investigates individual auditors' attitudes toward various corrupt behaviors in Palestine, an underexplored context. We examine the perception and determinants of auditors toward corruption and introduce the link between gender, job position, exposure to other cultures, age, and level of education as factors affecting attitudes toward corruption perception. Our findings reveal that auditors' perception of corruption differs across corrupt behaviors. In most surveyed behaviors, age is negatively associated with acceptance of corruption, and female auditors exhibit a higher attitude toward accepting corruption across various forms. Additionally, the auditor's position and outside education significantly impact their attitude toward accepting corruption. Our work fills an existing literature gap and provides valuable information for targeted regulators and professional bodies aiming to reduce corruption.     

Education, corruption, and the distribution of income

We examine how the interaction between education and corruption affects institutional reform and economic development. While corruption reduces average income and education, education increases not only output and hence potential corruption rents, but also produces more informed electorates that better monitor government actions. We find that economies with intermediate levels of education remain in a poverty trap since the level of skills creates sufficient corruption rents but not enough monitoring. Economies with low or high levels of education can escape the poverty trap, and inequality plays a key role in determining whether this occurs through a change in institutions or an expansion of education.     

Corruption and cross-border investment by multinational firms

Motivated by previous studies on the effect of corruption on foreign direct investment, we examine the impact of a distance measure of corruption between host and source countries on cross-border direct investment and find that corruption distance deters cross-border investment. The evidence indicates that corruption distance is not as serious a deterrent of outward direct investment from more-corrupt countries as it is from less-corrupt countries. We conclude that multinational firms with the capacity to engage in bribery can disregard this activity in transparent environments, whereas multinational firms accustomed to operating in transparent environments find it difficult to overcome the administrative complexities in corrupt environments. Journal of Comparative Economics 34 (4) (2006) 839–856.     

CORRUPTION AND INCOME INEQUALITY IN THE UNITED STATES

In this study we analyze the effects of corruption on income inequality. Our analysis advances the existing literature in three ways. First, instead of using one of the corruption indices assembled by various investment risk services, we use an objective measure of corruption: the number of public officials convicted in a state for crimes related to corruption. Second, we minimize the problems which are likely to arise because of data incomparability by examining the differences in income inequality across the United States. Finally, we exploit both time series and cross‐sectional variation in the data. We find robust evidence that an increase in corruption increases income inequality. (JEL D31, D73, I32)     

The internet as an indicator of corruption awareness

We apply a standard specification of the causes of corruption to a large sample of countries to investigate the effect of internet awareness about corruption on prevalence and perceptions of corruption. The main hypothesis is that greater corruption awareness acts as a corruption deterrent. A unique data set of internet searches on Google and Yahoo is compiled using alternate variations of “corruption”, “bribery” and “country name” keywords to capture internet corruption awareness. Results show that internet hits about corruption per capita correlate negatively with corruption perceptions and corruption incidence. This finding generally holds for different specifications and other robustness checks.