Taxation,corruption, and growth

We build an endogenous growth model to analyze the relationships between taxation, corruption, and economic growth. Entrepreneurs lie at the center of the model and face disincentive effects from taxation but acquire positive benefits from public infrastructure. Political corruption governs the efficiency with which tax revenues are translated into infrastructure. The model predicts an inverted-U relationship between taxation and growth, with corruption reducing the optimal taxation level. We find evidence consistent with these predictions and the entrepreneurial channel using data from the Longitudinal Business Database of the US Census Bureau. The marginal effect of taxation for growth for a state at the 10th or 25th percentile of corruption is significantly positive; on the other hand, the marginal effects of taxation for growth for a state at the 90th percentile of corruption are much lower across the board. We make progress towards causality through Granger-style tests and by considering periphery counties where effective tax policy is largely driven by bordering states. Finally, we calibrate our model and find that the calibrated taxation rate of 37% is fairly close to the model׳s estimated welfare maximizing taxation rate of 42%. Reducing corruption provides the largest potential impact for welfare gain through its impact on the uses of tax revenues.     

Socio-economic typologies of bureaucratic corruption and implications

Corruption all over the world is an ancient, but it seems very topical too, concern in politics and in the media. This paper investigates spatial and dynamic aspects of corruption using cellular automata. Although cellular automata are very simple, deterministic machines and thus crude approximations of real, economic situations, they are capable of describing self organization and complex patterns (of corruption). It is shown that neither social pressure nor pure economic incentives allow for complex patterns, although social pressure may lead to clusters of corrupt and uncorrupt segments within a bureaucracy. However, blending both above characteristics is capable explaining complex behavior. Extending the concept of cellular automata through mixing rules – across space (= bureaucrats) and time (accounting for global effects) – does not affect the fundamental properties.     

The impact of liberalization on bureaucratic corruption

Liberalization increases the number of goods available for consumption within a country. Since bureaucrats value variety, this raises the marginal utility of accepting a bribe. This “benefit effect” is counteracted by an increasing “cost effect” from corruption deterrence activities that arise due to greater international pressure to curb corruption. The interaction of these two effects can lead to a non-monotonic relation between liberalization and corruption. Moreover, pre-commitment to deterrence activities is shown to be more effective in controlling corruption. Empirical evidence supports the existence of a non-monotonic relation between economic openness and corruption among developing countries.     

家族企业接班人社会嵌入与跨代创业

当前经济社会形势下,家族企业接班人肩负着带领企业跨代创业的使命。然而,“人在江湖,身不由己”,接班人跨代创业的行为动机受到高管团队约束。基于此,根据社会嵌入理论,从认知、关系、结构三维度构建接班人嵌入到高管团队对经营多元化影响的分析模型,并对其中的作用机制进行探讨。实证研究表明,接班人和高管团队在认知嵌入上的教育背景同质性、在关系嵌入上的亲密度以及在结构嵌入上的中心化均与经营多元化呈正相关;信任在接班人和高管团队嵌入性与经营多元化关系中发挥部分中介作用。进一步分析发现,父代保守战略嵌入到高管团队中一定意义上不利于企业转型。结论表明,家族企业接班人跨代创业的行为动机受到社会嵌入的影响。     

Harassment, corruption and tax policy: reply

Saha [Eur. J. Polit. Econ. (2003)] has raised some points about our paper [Eur. J. Polit. Econ. 16 (2000) 75]. We herewith reply to these points.     

Natural resources, democracy and corruption

We study how natural resources can feed corruption and how this effect depends on the quality of the democratic institutions. Our game-theoretic model predicts that resource rents lead to an increase in corruption if the quality of the democratic institutions is relatively poor, but not otherwise. We use panel data covering the period 1980-2004 and 124 countries to test this theoretical prediction. Our estimates confirm that the relationship between resource rents and corruption depends on the quality of the democratic institutions. Our main results hold when we control for the effects of income, time varying common shocks, regional fixed effects and various additional covariates. They are also robust across different samples, and to the use of various alternative measures of natural resources, democracy and corruption.     

Political uncertainty and international corruption

This article uniquely considers influences of political uncertainty on corruption. Political uncertainty disturbs existing corrupt (and legal) contractual relations inducing greater corrupt activity to strengthen existing alliances and foster new ones. Results across two measures of cross-national corruption show that political assassinations increase corruption in different variations and time periods, and a general index of political instability mostly has the same effect. The influences of other factors on corruption are in general accord with the literature. These findings are generally robust to consideration of alternate dimensions of political uncertainty.     

Political stability,corruption and trust in politicians

In this article we develop a dynamic model where an endogenous evolution of trust impacts a politician's choice for bribe-taking and tax re-distribution. The politician obtains utility from net income that comes from his wage income, tax embezzlements and bribe-taking, and he also has incentives for tax re-distribution. The higher the tax embezzlements and the more bribes the politician takes the lower his citizens' trust and the less likely will he be re-elected. We support the evolution of trust with an econometric investigation.We analyze the necessary and sufficient conditions, and find that withholding taxes and taking bribes may be complements or substitutes for a politician, depending on the politician's incentives for tax re-distribution. Without these incentives, tax embezzlement and bribe taking are necessarily substitutes. With sufficiently strong incentives, we find re-distribution and bribe-taking may become complements. Complements implies that the politician, at least partly, increases bribe-taking because this allows him to increase re-distribution, which aids his additional motives for tax re-distribution.Based on comparative statics at steady state we also find that the higher the politician's wage the lower the bribe-taking and the higher the trust; stronger social capital leads to less bribe-taking and higher levels of trust; improvements in electoral accountability induce a decrease in bribing while trust increases.     

Corruption perceptions vs. corruption reality

This paper examines the accuracy of corruption perceptions by comparing Indonesian villagers' reported perceptions about corruption in a road-building project in their village with a more objective measure of ‘missing expenditures’ in the project. I find that villagers' reported perceptions do contain real information, and that villagers are sophisticated enough to distinguish between corruption in a particular road project and general corruption in the village. The magnitude of the reported information, however, is small, in part because officials hide corruption where it is hardest for villagers to detect. I also find that there are biases in reported perceptions. The findings illustrate the limitations of relying solely on corruption perceptions, whether in designing anti-corruption policies or in conducting empirical research on corruption.     

Petty corruption

This paper analyzes a petty corruption model in which the entrepreneur’s type is drawn from an absolutely continuous probability distribution function F over [0, 1], and perfect Bayesian equilibrium is adopted as the solution concept for a one-stage game. In the one-stage game, if there is more than one bureaucrat, no project is approved with a strictly positive probability. For an infinitely repeated game, I show that the single window policy strictly increases the social benefits in a socially optimal equilibrium. I would like to thank Mukul Majumdar for valuable guidance and encouragement. I am also grateful to Kaushik Basu, Fernando Vega-Redondo, an anonymous referee, seminar participants at the international meeting for public economic theory (PET07) and especially Ani Guerdjikova and Roy Radner for helpful comments. Thanks are due to Hideaki Goto and Eunkyeong Lee for useful conversation.     

Competition and corruption in an agency relationship

The paper reconsiders the relationship between competition and corruption in a model, where corruption has solid informational foundations and where the regulatory response to the possibility of corruption is taken into account. It is shown that the effect of greater competition on corruption depends on the complementarity or substitutability of the two instruments available to decrease information rents, namely low powered incentives and greater competition. The paper concludes with a brief empirical exploration of the relationship between competitiveness and corruption on African data.     

Modern slavery,corruption, and hysteresis

We develop a model where firms profit from coercing workers into employment under conditions violating national law and international conventions and where corrupt public servants prosecuting violations of the rules are willing to turn cases down if bribed. Firms and public servants are heterogeneous. Firms benefit differently from the use of coerced labour whereas public servants have differing intrinsic motivations to behave honestly. Moreover, there is a socially determined warm-glow effect: honest public servants feel better if their colleagues are honest too. The determination of bribes is modelled via Nash bargaining between the firm and the corrupt civil servant. It is shown that multiple equilibria and hysteresis are possible. Depending on history, an economy may be trapped in a locally stable high-corruption, high-slavery equilibrium and major changes in government policies may be necessary to move the economy out of this equilibrium. Moreover, we show that trade bans that are effective in reducing slavery in the export industry tend to raise slavery in the remainder of the economy. It is possible that this leakage effect dominates the reduction of slavery in the export sector.     

A controlled field experiment on corruption

This paper reports on a controlled field experiment on corruption designed to address two important issues: the experimenter's scrutiny and the unobservability of corruption. In the experiment, a grader is offered a bribe along with a demand for a better grade. We find that graders respond more favorably to bigger bribes, while the effect of higher wages is ambiguous: it lowers the bribe's acceptance, but it fosters reciprocation. Monitoring and punishment can deter corruption, but we cannot reject that it may also crowd-out intrinsic motivations for honesty when intensified. Finally, our results suggest several micro-determinants of corruption including age, ability, religiosity, but not gender.     

财富、企业家才能与最优融资契约安排

本文认为企业家是企业发生的逻辑起点 ,是最初的“中心签约人” ,因此力图站在企业家的角度来考察企业家的融资行为。我们证明理性的企业家往往会将企业残值的优先索取权让度给外部投资者 ,从而否定了关于“投资者是最后的剩余索取者”的先验观点。在认识到“提供担保服务”是企业家自有资本的基本功能的基础上 ,我们揭示出一些关于企业家选择融资契约的规律。最后 ,我们还进一步发现即便未受财富约束 ,企业家也不会完全依靠自有资本来创业 ,因为很可能存在一个最优的企业家自有资本比例。     

腐败对外国直接投资影响的实证分析

本文依据世界106个国家的截面数据．分析了腐败对外国直接投资（FDI）的影响。研究结果表明，腐败与FDI之间存在显著的负相关。但是，腐败对FDI的负面影响可以在一定程度上被诸如东道国经济开放和政治稳定等积极因素所抵消。     

Can self regulation work?: a story of corruption,impunity and cover-up

This paper analyzes the reputation-based incentives of a Self-Regulatory Organization (SRO) to detect and expose consumer fraud committed by its members, and the members’ incentives to bribe the SRO in exchange for a cover-up to avoid an external punishment. In a corruption-free benchmark, SROs are effective in detecting, exposing and deterring fraud only if exposure yields a reputation gain to the SRO, which depends on consumers inferences about the SRO’s type. However, if this case prevails the member can succeed in bribing the SRO in exchange for a cover-up and impunity. Despite this, a bribed SRO yields more vigilance and lower fraud than no self-regulation at all.      

南方模仿、企业家精神和长期增长

本文在南北贸易的框架下发展了一个内生增长模式 ,其中从事模仿活动的南方企业家是长期经济增长的关键因素。而且 ,我们强调知识产权保护的程度对南方模仿的效应。在我们的模式中 ,拥有较多企业家的经济比拥有较少企业家的经济有更高的增长率。本文的政策含义十分明显 ,一国影响企业家数量以及企业家活动范围的政策和相关的制度环境都会最终影响一国的增长率。     

Do rapid political and trade liberalizations increase corruption?

Corruption scandals seem to abound in countries that have undergone reform. However, there has been no study of whether different combinations of reforms cause an increase in corruption. Theory provides some guidance as to the direction of causality—on the one hand, reforms make politicians accountable to voters as well as introducing more competition, which should decrease corruption. On the other hand, reforms may not be credible, which provides for an incentive for corruption. This paper uses the numerous cases of political and economic liberalizations that occurred in the 1980s and 1990s to examine this issue. The findings are that undertaking both types of reforms in rapid succession leads to a decrease in corruption, while countries that liberalized more than 5 years after democratizing experienced an increase in corruption.     

信任对知识管理的促进机制研究

近年来,知识管理已成为讨论的热点,信任被认为是知识管理的重要影响因素。然而信任是一个具有复杂结构的概念,它有不同的层面和类型,而以往研究很少考虑不同类型和基础的信任对知识管理的影响。于是从制度型信任、认知型信任和情感型信任3种不同类型的信任出发,分析其对知识管理的影响和促进机制。     

Initial conditions and privatisation as causes of post-communist corruption

This article investigates the economic determinants of corruption in post-communist countries. We conduct an empirical verification of two research hypotheses using EBRD and World Bank data on 27 post-communist economies over the 1996–2014 period. The first hypothesis suggests that corruption is rooted in the communist past, when these countries embraced communist institutions, social norms, as well as low-development structural factors broadly defined as initial conditions. The second hypothesis is that the flawed transition process led corruption to increase because politics and business were never separated. The elites pushed measures that preserved their status while obstructing reform policies that might endanger their interests. Our empirical results demonstrate that both hypotheses are valid to a limited extent, while revealing a more complex view of the reforms and initial conditions. Corruption seems to be related to the natural resource curse, to the lack of small-scale privatisation and to a long history of underdevelopment that could have preceded communism.