Corruption Via Media Capture: The Effect of Competition

In this article, we compare a government's optimal choice of whether to engage in corruption by capturing the media outlets through bribery in two alternative media market structures: monopoly versus duopoly. While there is an extra bribe claimant in a media duopoly relative to monopoly, it may also be harder for each firm to individually expose corruption when the rival co‐opts with the government. We find that when the latter effect is stronger than the former, media is captured at lower bribes under duopoly relative to monopoly and in such instances media competition facilitates rather than hindering corruption.     

腐败控制、私人部门参与基础设施提供与反贫困效应——来自发展中国家的经验证据(1996-2014)

惩治腐败和消除贫困始终是广大发展中国家面临的重要任务。文章基于1996年到2014年138个发展中国家的数据，探索了腐败控制降低一国贫困率的新机制，即促进私人部门参与基础设施提供。我们发现：第一，腐败控制显著促进了私人部门参与基础设施提供；第二，私人部门参与基础设施提供显著降低了发展中国家的贫困率；第三，"中介效应"分析显示，腐败控制是通过促进私人部门参与基础设施提供进而降低一国贫困率的。文章的发现是对发展中国家腐败与贫困关系研究的一个有益补充，不但有助于理解私人部门参与基础设施提供的制度基础，也有助于发展中国家设计反贫困的公共政策。     

微腐败对企业生产率的影响——基于世界银行对143个国家企业调查数据的实证研究

文章利用世界银行对全球143个国家2002-2014年企业的调查数据,重点考察企业微腐败行为对企业生产率的影响。实证结果表明,在控制内生性问题的前提下,微腐败会显著降低企业生产率,一系列稳健性检验验证了结论的可靠性。此外,文章还重点探讨了微腐败影响企业生产率的机制,发现微腐败会显著抑制企业创新从而损害企业生产率。分子样本讨论发现,微腐败对私营企业、服务行业、腐败程度高地区以及经济欠发达地区的企业的生产率负面影响更大。     

司法腐败的成本研究

在一个法官根据贿赂的相对大小来决定判决结果的腐败的法律制度的背景下．我们通过一个公共品的自愿提供的模型．讨论了司法腐败对经济行为的影响及其产生的成本。司法腐败的存在使得参与人合作联盟形成时．每个参与人都需要交纳一笔额外的费用。这笔费用反映了司法腐败所造成的成本．其作用是在司法腐败的背景下使合约变得有约束力。我们发现．虽然司法腐败会造成相当大的成本．但在一定条件下．并不会妨碍公共品的提供数量达到在完美法律制度下所能达到的社会最优水平。     

Corruption and development

Corruption is studied as a form of decision-taking under uncertainty and separate reaction functions are derived for the briber and bribee that shed light on the determination of the bribe. A typology of corruption is established drawing the distinction between extortionary, subversive and benign corruption and their effects on allocative efficiency are explored. It is argued that while the economic effects of corruption are likely to be unfavourable there may be circumstances where the converse holds. The discussion does not extend to the moral and social aspects of corruption.     

EXPLORING THE IMPACT OF FOREIGN AID ON CORRUPTION: HAS THE “ANTI‐CORRUPTION MOVEMENT” BEEN EFFECTIVE?

Though many studies have referred to an “anti‐corruption movement” beginning in the 1990s by major international organizations, none has empirically tested its effectiveness on corruption. The data show that from 1997 onward, the impact of multilateral aid is strongly and robustly associated with lower corruption levels, while bilateral aid is shown to be an insignificant determinant. An increase in any official development assistance (ODA) pre‐1997 is associated with higher levels of corruption or has no impact at all. Using panel data from 1986 to 2006, this study reveals a more nuanced relationship between ODA and corruption than previous studies and demonstrates that when disaggregating the time periods, there are sensitive temporal effects of ODA's effect on corruption overlooked by earlier studies, and provides initial evidence of the effectiveness of the international organization anti‐corruption movement in the developing world.     

ANTI-CORRUPTION STRATEGIES IN INDONESIA

During 19992000 Indonesia pursued many anti-corruption reforms but appeared to achieve little success in reducing the level of corruption, which remained a high profile problem in all branches of government. This article summarises the reform initiatives carried out since 1998 and offers an explanation for their very limited success. Obstacles to reducing corruption in Indonesia include the economic and political constraints facing the current government and the entrenched nature of corruption. The content of the reform program itself may also contribute to the persistence of the problem. The program consists primarily of moves to introduce monitoring and sanctioning mechanisms that are external to particular government organisations. Internal reforms that aim to improve organisational self-discipline have received much less attention. The reform program may thus be inherently incomplete.     

Can bribes buy protection against international competition?

This paper explores the association between corruption and trade policy. A non-technical theoretical framework first outlines the effects of corruption on non-tariff barriers at the political and bureaucratic level. Both parts have incentives to accept bribes in exchange for increasing barriers. These considerations include politicians’ re-election motives, implying that free information may weaken the association between corruption and trade barriers. I employ panel data on corruption and non-tariff barriers in three periods 1995–2005. The results show that corruption tends to lead to higher non-tariff barriers. The effectiveness of corruption in buying barriers varies with the degree of press freedom and GDP per capita.     

Does Corruption Affect suicide? Econometric Evidence from OECD Countries

The question to what extent corruption influences suicide still remains unanswered. This paper examines the effect of corruption on suicide using a panel data approach for 24 OECD countries over the period 1995?C2004. Our results show that suicide rates are lower in countries with lower levels of corruption. We also find evidence that this effect is approximately three times larger for males than for females. It follows from these findings that corruption has a detrimental effect on societal well-being and its effect differs based on the social position of genders.     

Corruption and firm growth: Evidence from China

Corruption is one of the most pervasive obstacles to economic and social development. However, in the existing literature it appears that corruption seems to be less harmful in some countries than in others. The most striking examples are well known as the “East Asian paradox”: countries displaying exceptional growth records despite having thriving corruption cultures. The aim of this paper is to explain the high corruption but fast economic growth puzzle in China by providing firm-level evidence of the relation between corruption and growth and investigating how financial development influences the former relationship. Our empirical results show that corruption is likely to contribute to firms' growth. We further highlight the substitution relationship between corruption and financial development on firm growth. This means that corruption appears not to be a vital constraint on firm growth if financial markets are underdeveloped. However, pervasive corruption deters firm growth where there are more developed financial markets. This implies that fast firm growth will not be observed until a later stage of China's development when financial markets are well-functioning and corruption is under control. Furthermore, the substitution relationship exists in the private and state-owned firms. Geographically, similar results can be seen in the Southeast and Central regions.     

State Power and Private Profit: the political economy of corruption in Southeast Asia

This article reviews the extensive political and economic literature since 1990 on corruption in Indonesia, Philippines, Thailand, Malaysia and Singapore. After considering each country's individual recent history of corruption, the article comparatively analyses the relationship of corruption in these countries with, respectively, the roles of the state, the private sector and external actors, democratisation and decentralisation, and the impact of corruption on economic growth and inequality. Our conclusion is that while economic liberalisation, democratisation and centralisation of state power influence the forms of corruption and its impact on national economic performance, they are neither necessary nor sufficient for its decline.     

腐败的本质与决定因素:理论与实证

腐败现象在人类社会源远流长,深入理解其本质和决定因素是有效治理腐败的基础.腐败的经济学研究基本沿着委托代理理论的脉络展开,分析不同激励体系以及各类制度安排对腐败的决定作用.在对理论和实证中涉及的腐败本质及其决定因素系统总结的基础上,本文重点梳理了近年来实验经济学对腐败相关问题的研究.这些研究从度量腐败、检验理论和反腐机制设计等多层面出发,对认识腐败行为的本质与内在动机,进而发展系统有效的反腐败措施提供了丰富见解.     

The Negligence Rule in the Presence of Judicial Corruption and Social Norms

This paper investigates the phenomenon of judicial corruption and incorporates it into Polinsky, A. M. (1980). Strict liability vs. negligence in a market setting. American Economic Review, 70, 363–367 framework so as to analyze the efficiency of the negligence rule. By shedding light on the role of social norms in regard to the phenomenon of judicial corruption, this analysis provides implications for policy. First, more prevalent corruption at the status quo tends to intensify the extent of the corruption itself and, as a result, the effectiveness of the government’s corruption enforcement is greatly lessened. This implies that an excessively lenient policy of corruption may result in an uncontrollable consequence; once corruption becomes rampant, it is costly to bring it down. Of great importance, in the presence of such a corruption effect, the social optimum cannot be achieved based on the negligence rule and the equivalence between the strict liability and negligence rule fails. Secondly, the attitude of the society toward a corrupt judge plays a crucial role in governing the effectiveness of an efficient wage arrangement. If the society can fully accept a corrupt judge, corruption will never be controlled even with the incentive wage scheme.

Domestic interest rate,foreign direct investment,and corruption

It has been argued that foreign direct investment can exert upward or downward pressure on the domestic interest rate depending on foreign investors’ relative weights on internal and external finance with respect to the domestic economy. Additionally, a country’s level of corruption can influence firms’ ability to obtain external finance. We find that across countries a 1 percent increase in FDI inflows (outflows) is more likely to reduce the domestic interest rate by as much as 0.7 (1) percent. This empirical association between domestic interest rates and FDI flows is non-monotonically contingent on a country’s level of corruption.

     

地方政府腐败会影响私人投资积极性吗？ ——基于动态面板模型的系统GMM分析

通过对中国省级层面数据建立的动态面板模型进行SYS-GMM估计发现,中国的地方政府腐败对私人投资积极性产生了显著的负面影响,尽管腐败并非影响私人投资的最重要因素,但其负面影响超过了政府公共投资带来的私人投资挤入效应。私人投资对直接影响其成本收益状况的因素最为敏感。多种稳健性检验表明腐败对私人投资的影响显著性和力度是非常稳定的。     

Voluntary Disclosure and Equity Offerings: Reducing Information Asymmetry or Hyping the Stock?*

We examine corporate disclosure activity around seasoned equity offerings and its relationship to stock prices. Beginning six months before the offering, our sample issuing firms dramatically increase their disclosure activity, particularly for the categories of disclosure over which firms have the most discretion. The increase is significant after controlling for the firm's current and future earnings performance and tends to be largest for firms with selling shareholders participating in the offering. However, there is no change in the frequency of forward‐looking statements prior to the equity offering, something that is expressly discouraged by the securities law. Firms that maintain a consistent level of disclosure experience price increases prior to the offering, and only minor price declines at the offering announcement relative to the control firms, suggesting that disclosure may have reduced the information asymmetry inherent in the offering. Firms that substantially increase their disclosure activity in the six months before the offering also experience price increases prior to the offering relative to the control firms, but suffer much larger price declines at the announcement of their intent to issue equity, suggesting that the disclosure increase may have been used to “hype the stock” and the market may have partially corrected for the earlier price increase. Firms that maintain a consistent disclosure level have no unusual return behavior relative to the control firms subsequent to the announcement, while the firms that “hyped” their stock continue to suffer negative returns, providing further evidence that the increased disclosure activity may have been hype, and suggesting that the hype may have been successful in lowering the firms' cost of equity capital.     

A Eurasian Economic Vision for the Twenty-first Century

Widespread corruption in mainland China adversely affects the overall economy in general and international business in particular. Prior to the establishment of the Independent Commission against Corruption (ICAC) in 1974, corruption was also rampant in Hong Kong. The ICAC effectively cleaned corruption in Hong Kong within a short period of time. Hong Kong's success in this area has prompted the Chinese government to learn from Hong Kong's experience. This article reviews the factors that contributed to Hong Kong's success in fighting corruption and discusses whether China can learn from the Hong Kong experience. From this, we can conclude that, first, Hong Kong's experience demonstrates that a corruption‐prone culture can be changed in a relatively short period of time; second, in order for China to learn from Hong Kong's experience, there must be substantial changes in China's political and economic institutions.     

Stabilization and its Discontents: Argentina's Economic Restructuring in the 1990s

This paper assesses the Argentine stabilization and market reform strategies since 1989. We argue that Argentina may be penned in by its own success: exchange rate targeting quelled inflation but the resulting real appreciation has limited export and employment growth; microeconomic reforms raised efficiency but have threatened income distribution and hence political stability; exclusive styles of policy-making helped enact reform but have led to corruption and policy insensitivity and contributed to rising social discontent. We close by suggesting how a “second generation” of reforms could tackle these issues and spread the proceeds of reform to a wider segment of the Argentine public.     

Genuine Wealth Per Capita as a Measure of Sustainability and the Negative Impact of Corruption on Sustainable Growth in Sub‐Sahara Africa

In this paper, we argue that the answer to the question of whether the impact of corruption on development is homogenous, is no. Our optimism rest on how development may be conceptualised. When equated to a narrow measure in economic‐wise which fundamentally ignores critical issues, then there is a possibility the outlook could be positive. But when conceptualised using a broad‐based approach such as sustainable development, then the outlook could be negative. We assess a panel of 22 economies in Sub‐Sahara Africa with the most recent dataset (1996–2013) from the World Bank and other reputable agencies. Our finding is quite robust. It holds in pooled OLS, Fixed effects and GMM within IV settings; and it also holds for different measures of institutions and different measures of development using growth per capita GDP and genuine wealth per capita, respectively. Taking stock of major policy blue‐prints of selected countries in the region on the fight against corruption, we are able to point out that institutions play important role in insulating citizens against the devastation caused by corruption. Overall, through this comparison, we are able to signal that both incidental and systematic corruption poses a long‐term threat to sustainable development.     

Civil society organisations' contribution to the anti-corruption movement in Indonesia

Soeharto era concern about corruption was deflected by the establishment of toothless anti-corruption committees, and by suppression of anti-corruption activism and media comment. With Soeharto's demise, activists began to publicise their concerns more openly – at first speaking in general terms, but later making increasingly specific allegations. The sporadic activism of the Soeharto years was consolidated, first through cooperative action among similarly motivated informal groups, and later through establishment of formal civil society organisations (CSOs) intent on rolling back corruption. The CSOs have played a key role in pushing for new laws and institutions to help eradicate corruption, and many corrupt officials have been imprisoned. This paper finds little evidence, however, that corruption has declined significantly. It argues that further progress depends on CSOs gaining a better understanding of the underlying causes of corruption, and that these are to be found in public sector personnel management practices.