Is the Efficiency Wage Efficient? The Social Norm and Organizational Corruption

The effectiveness of efficiency wage incentives is often jeopardized by perverse organizational corruption. We model organizational corruption as a phenomenon of social interaction and relate the substantial psychological role characterizing the social norm to the corruption problem. We find that if the status quo bribery rate within the firm is high, social norms can no longer serve as a sufficient sanction against a corrupt supervisor; pandemic organizational corruption tends to generate a critical mass effect—the snowball effect—which intensifies the corruption effect. This intensified effect, due to the snowballing character of social norms, may more than offset the usual incentive effect of wages, resulting in more widespread shirking in the firm.
JEL classification : D 82; J 41     

论朱元璋的惩贪思想

朱元璋的惩贪思想从其萌芽、形成,到其成熟和完备有着一个复杂的过程。他的惩贪思想具有系统性、完整性的特点。朱元璋惩贪态度坚决,手段残酷,规模宏大,诛杀贪官之众多的原因,源于其惩贪思想的体系化。     

法制建设、激励机制与社会规范——治理金融腐败的长效机制设计刍议

对货币资金这一稀缺性资源的垄断性配置及委托—代理问题的普遍存在,使得金融腐败极易孳生,而金融腐败对一国金融稳定和经济增长冲击巨大、影响深远。鉴于金融腐败是法制建设、激励机制、社会规范等多方面因素交互作用的结果,要构建治理金融腐败的长效机制,就必须加强金融反腐法制建设、健全激励机制、加强廉政文化建设,多管齐下,才能从源头治理金融腐败这一痼疾。     

On the persistence of corruption

This paper tries to answer the question why the phenomenon of corruption seems to be inherently existent in any society. The dynamic model presented shows how rational agents may generate multiple equilibria of corruption within the same kind of socio-economic system. We assume that the individual disutility caused by the loss of reputation from a corrupt transaction depends on the acceptance of corrupt behavior by the representative individual. Depending on the values of some key parameters like the marginal utility of corrupt behavior and the initial acceptance of corruption a completely corrupt equilibrium where all people completely accept corruption or a completely honest equilibrium where corruption is not accepted at all may be the limit state of the optimal path. Also inner equilibria in-between exist; however, they are always unstable.     

Tax Evasion,Corruption and Tax Loopholes

This paper addresses tax loopholes that allow firms to exploit borderline cases between legal tax avoidance and illegal tax evasion. In general, tax loopholes are detrimental to a revenue‐maximizing government. This may change in the presence of corruption in the tax administration. Tax loopholes may serve as a separating mechanism that helps governments maximize revenues and curb corruption, which may explain why developing countries only gradually close loopholes in their tax codes.     

Why is Corruption Tolerated?

It is maintained that a closer analysis of the features of the underlying contract reveals that under many circumstances corruption is in fact a rational and understandable reaction to institutional failures, which are often far from accidental. Sometimes it can even be considered legitimate, when instrumental in achieving goals shared by the vast majority of the electorate.To this purpose, three different stylized institutional frameworks are analyzed: developed, totalitarian and transition countries. The origin, scope and consequences of corruption vary significantly across the different frameworks. The normative conclusions should therefore be adjusted accordingly.     

城市公用事业民营化中的腐败与削减

城市公用事业民营化虽然作为中国城市公用事业改革的趋势方向,同任何改革一样,也存在着负面效应,民营化中的腐败就是其主要负面效应之一.与民营化相关的腐败主要包括两个方面,即民营化中的国有资产流失与民营化后的寻租.本文分析了城市公用事业民营化中的腐败、形式、成因,并结合模型从预防角度上提出了治理对策.     

Corruption,product complexity and African exporters

Several studies have shown that African manufacturers perform poorly, especially in comparison to their counterparts from other developing countries. We build on these studies by (a) examining the decision to stop exporting among African manufacturers and (b) investigating whether these decisions can be linked to institutional dimensions (such as corruption). Consistent with previous studies, we observe that a significant fraction of African firms stop exporting every year. Using product complexity as a measure of an industry’s ‘sensitivity’ to corruption, we find that firms in more ‘corruption-sensitive’ industries are more likely to stop exporting if there is an increase in overall corruption in the exporting country. Firm characteristics (such as size and productivity) also seem to influence the decision to stop exporting. Our finding about the relationship between corruption and the decision to stop exporting supports the conventional wisdom that corruption is detrimental to economic performance.     

从源头上建立科学防治腐败体系的几点思考

提高反腐倡廉建设科学化水平,重在源头上建立科学的防治腐败体系,科学化的源头防治腐败领域归根结底是通过科学规范的程序、完善的权力制约机制和制度,在体制和管理上形成主体清晰、责任明确、权力配置科学的责任体系,为此,从规范管理者入手,构筑和夯实制度防线,加强管理者聘用、行权、行为约束和监督,不断在各项管理工作中,找准隐患,溯本求源,以整体联动的方式,全员进行齐抓共防,并不断创新思路,突出实效,把反腐倡廉建设推向一个新水平。     

Commons,Collective Action,and Corruption

John R. Commons tried to save capitalism by making it good. His career was characterized by a sustained attempt to reduce social inequality by promoting collective action. Thanks to his proximity to the terrain, Commons often found himself close to authentic examples of corruption. Indeed, in his published works, corruption was treated exclusively from this perspective. His analysis reveals that collective action is not only the cause, but also the consequence of corruption, and that, in addition, the struggle against corruption is dependent on collective action for its success. I argue that Commons’s position is diametrically opposed to the theses developed later by Nathaniel Leff and Samuel Huntington. For Commons, the main issue is not that there is too much control over individual actions, but that there is too little.     

Corruption,foreign aid and welfare to the poor

This paper investigates the impact of foreign aid and corruption on the welfare of different classes in an economy that receives aid and uses it to finance a public good. We use a general equilibrium model that consists of three goods and three income classes to derive our results. The most important result we obtain is to show that under certain conditions, aid and corruption immiserize the poor.     

Group Dynamics of Corruption in Public Organizations

Abstract

When there are two groups of officials in a public organization, we show that depending on the groups’ behavior – collusive or competitive – increasing the level of monitoring and punishment may have different impacts on corruption. If the two groups of public officials had been demonstrating collusive behavior, increased monitoring or punishment reduces both the level of corrupt activities and the corrupt officials’ bribe revenues. However, if the groups had not been colluding, increased monitoring reduces the level of corruption, but increases the corruption revenues collected. Only after reaching the optimum level of monitoring, is this result reversed.     

Corruption,remittances, and public goods: A unified framework

Remittances are an important source of income for the very countries afflicted by high levels of corruption. However, corruption undermines the development potential of remittances. With this in mind, we propose policy reforms that harness the potential of remittances while mitigating corruption. Unlike previous studies, we point to two channels: (1) the corrupt government's trade-off between its financial interests (corruption), the provision of a public good, and the gains from a higher inflow of remittances; and (2) the household's consumption of the public good relative to that of the privately obtained substitute of the public good.     

On the Cultural Transmission of Corruption

We provide a cultural explanation to the phenomenon of corruption in the framework of an overlapping generations model with intergenerational transmission of values. We show that the economy has two steady states with different levels of corruption. The driving force in the equilibrium selection process is the education effort exerted by parents which depends on the distribution of ethics in the population and on expectations about future policies. We propose some policy interventions which via parents' efforts have long-lasting effects on corruption and show the success of intensive education campaigns. Educating the young is a key element in reducing corruption successfully. Journal of Economic Literature Classification Numbers: D10, J13.     

土地腐败问题的行政审批视角分析

本文提出目前我国土地行政管理体制中不够合理的土地行政权力配置、有待完善和提高的土地行政审批程序和效率,为土地腐败行为创造了条件,也损害了正常的市场秩序和公众利益。合理配置土地行政审批权力、进一步规范土地行政审批程序、提高土地行政审批效率是抑制土地腐败的有效途径。     

湖南预防腐败合力机制探索

腐败现象作为剥削阶级和剥削制度的产物,它的本质是指国家公务人员借职务之便获取个人利益,从而使国家政治生活发生病态变化的过程。简言之就是权力私有化。通过分析近年来湖南省预防腐败出现困境的原因,试图从预防腐败的文化培育、健全法律法规、体制机制创新等,构建湖南预防腐败的合力机制。     

Quid pro quo

This paper attempts to shed some new light on two puzzles about Chinese economy: Rapid economic growth despite pandemic corruption; dramatic development of the private sector despite ‘ownership discrimination' in financial resource allocation. In our model, the productive bribe facilitates the more efficient private firm to obtain the scarce financial resource, either from the bank or from the state-owned enterprise, and corrects the initial allocation distortion. Meanwhile, our model also generates the distortionary and the predatory bribes which hurt the economy.     

Corruption and corporate leverage in an emerging economy: The role of economic freedom

This study investigated the effects of corruption and economic freedom on corporate leverage. We also evaluated how economic freedom shapes the effect of corruption on corporate leverage. Using a sample of Vietnamese firms covering a nine-year period from 2010 to 2018, we find evidence that increased control of corruption has a significant positive impact on firm leverage, whereas the opposite is true for economic freedom. This effect is robust to alternative measures of control of corruption as well as advanced estimation methods, such as firm-fixed effects and quantile regressions. Our results also reveal that the positive impact of corruption controls on corporate leverage is more pronounced for firms with high economic freedom. Econometrically, our findings indicate that firms with better control over corruption prefer debt financing, as demonstrated by their higher leverage ratio.