Modelling the dynamics of corruption and unemployment with heterogeneous labour

This paper presents an endogenous growth model with heterogeneous labour, endogenous unemployment, and public sector corruption. Unlike most previous studies, the model does not separate public officials and private individuals into two distinct groups. Instead, taking up bureaucratic appointment as a public servant is modelled as an occupational choice, which then allows for the endogenous determination of the proportion of public officials, the share of corrupt officials among them, and the public investment efficiency of the economy. The dynamics of endogenous corruption and unemployment are studied using numerical policy experiments based on a stylized representation of a middle-income African economy with high corruption and unemployment. The main finding is that, large-scale public infrastructure push has no effect on raising growth in an economy with high corruption. However, if preceded by social and anti-corruption policies that successfully induce a structural change, it will then be effective in raising growth.     

Political contributions and corruption in the United States

The empirical evidence presented in this study indicates that political contributions and corruption are complements, rather than substitutes. Based on panel data for seven election cycles, regression results show that in the United States, political contributions and federal corruption convictions are positively correlated. Accordingly, we propose an alternative explanation for the relationship between political contributions and corruption: two components of a comprehensive strategy for rent-seeking. As long-term investments, political contributions influence legislators to change the rules of the game; as short-term investments, corruption influences public officials to sidestep the existing rules, in order to maximize the rent collected.     

Corruption and the public display of wealth

We study an agent–client model of corruption, in which potential corruptors are uncertain about the probability with which officials are subjected to an audit, either high or low. We characterize a signaling equilibrium, in which officials who are less likely to be audited engage in public conspicuous consumption, whereas those who are more likely to be audited do not. In this equilibrium, officials are better off than in the equilibria without conspicuous consumption. The signaling equilibrium exists if the officials' bargaining power vis‐à‐vis potential corruptors is sufficiently high, which implies that corruption can be curbed by creating competition among officials.     

Rewards and the private provision of public goods on dynamic networks

We study an evolutionary model of a public good game with rewards played on a network. Giving rewards to contributors transforms the game but gives rise to a second-order dilemma. By allowing for coevolution of strategies and network structure, the evolutionary dynamics operate on both structure and strategy. Players learn with whom to interact and how to act and can overcome the second-order dilemma. More specifically, the network represents social distance which changes as players interact. Through the change in social distance, players learn with whom to interact, which we model using reinforcement dynamics. We find that, for certain parameter constellations, a social institution, prescribing prosocial behavior and thus solving the second-order dilemma, can emerge from a population of selfish players. Due to the dynamic structure of the network, the institution has an endogenous punishment mechanism ensuring that defectors will be excluded from the benefits of the institution and the public good will be supplied efficiently.     

经济转轨、集体腐败与政治改革--基于中国转轨经验的经济学分析

腐败是经济转轨国家中普遍存在的现象,中国当前的腐败问题呈现集体腐败的特征.文章主要是运用博弈理论对集体腐败行为进行解释.文章证明了在中国这样的经济转轨国家,由于缺乏一个独立的监督机构,一般都是上级官员作为其下级官员的监督者,他们非常容易合谋,形成集体腐败.随后文章对中国集体腐败问题做了实证分析,并且提出了相应的政治改革措施.     

Sustainability of public debt,public capital formation,and endogenous growth in an overlapping generations setting

Under the golden rule of public finance for public investment with a constant budget deficit/GDP ratio, we show that for the sustainability of government budget deficits there is a threshold of the initial public debt for a given stock of public capital, and that this threshold level of public debt is increasing in the stock of public capital. If the initial public debt is greater than the threshold, the government can no longer sustain budget deficits, while if it is smaller, the government can conduct a permanent deficit policy, which eventually leads to a positive public debt/GDP ratio.     

Corruption and growth: The role of governance,public spending,and economic development

This paper analyses how the quality of governance, the size of public spending, and economic development affect the relationship between bureaucratic corruption and economic growth. The analysis shows that the interaction between corruption and governance shapes the efficiency of public spending, which in turn, determines the growth effects of corruption. Specifically, corruption improves economic efficiency only when the actual government size is above the optimal level. It implies that a growth-maximising level of corruption is possible. This paper also finds that the incidence of corruption declines with economic development. This is because with economic development the wage rate rises and makes private rent seeking costs higher, thereby, discouraging corruption. The main policy implication is that targeting tax evaders instead of bureaucrats is more effective in terms of both reducing corruption and improving the growth potential of an economy.     

土壤重金属污染治理多方演化博弈研究

土壤重金属污染严重制约了中国经济的高效优质发展,第三方治理模式的引入在促进污染治理专业化的同时,引发相关利益主体关系扭曲,因而厘清各主体关系有助于解决土壤污染整治的现实困境。基于演化博弈理论,构建政府、污染企业、第三方治理企业演化博弈模型,探讨其博弈均衡和演化趋势,并进行仿真分析。研究表明,罚款数额和监管成本、寻租成本和治理费用、政府奖励和寻租收益是分别影响政府、土壤污染企业、第三方治理企业演化稳定策略的关键因素;在各主体博弈中,政府能够以行政管制遏制污染企业违法行为,第三方治理企业严格治理会改变污染企业理性预期,以期共同打造“政府尽责、企业担责和第三方治理主体负责”的理想演化均衡策略。     

Illegal drugs and public corruption: Crack based evidence from California

Do illegal drugs foster public corruption? To estimate the causal effect of drugs on public corruption, we adopt the synthetic control method and exploit the fact that crack cocaine markets emerged in California in 1981, before reaching any other U.S. state. Our results show that public corruption more than tripled in California in the first three years following the arrival of crack cocaine. We argue that this resulted from the particular characteristics of illegal drugs: cheap technology and rigid demand, which fosters a convergence of interests between criminals and corrupted public officials resulting in a positive causal impact of illegal drugs on corruption.     

Corruption,workforce selection and mismatch in the public sector

We examine the impact of corruption on workforce selection and personnel allocation in the public sector. Using Italian data, we find that the selection of public employees in terms of human capital worsens in comparison to that of their private sector counterparts in areas with higher levels of corruption. Moreover, corruption is associated with educational mismatch in the allocation of human resources and, in particular, with an increase in the rate of under-qualification. These results are robust to several alternative indicators and specifications, including IV estimation using past dependence on public spending and the historical relevance of foreign domination as exogenous sources of variation for current corruption.     

Corruption,competition and democracy

This paper presents a model of the interaction between corrupt government officials and industrial firms to show that corruption is antithetical to competition. It is hypothesized that a government agent that controls access to a formal market has a self-interest in demanding a bribe payment that serves to limit the number of firms. This corrupt official will also be subject to a detection technology that is a function of the amount of the bribe payment and the number of firms that pay it. Under quite normal assumptions about the shape of the graph of the detection function, multiple equilibria can arise where one equilibrium is characterized by high corruption and low competition, and another is characterized by low corruption and high competition. Some suggestive empirical evidence is presented that supports the main hypothesis that competition and corruption are negatively related.     

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     

Growth maximizing government size,social capital,and corruption

Our paper intersects two topics in growth theory: the growth maximizing government size and the role of Social Capital in development. We modify a simple overlapping generations framework by introducing two key features: a production function à la Barro together with the possibility that public officials steal a fraction of public resources under their own control. As underlined by the literature on corruption, Social Capital affects public officials' accountability through many channels which also affect the probability of being caught for embezzlement and misappropriation of public resources. Therefore, in our endogenous growth model such probability is taken as a proxy of Social Capital. We find that maximum growth rates are compatible with Big Government size, measured both in terms of expenditures and public officials, when associated with high levels of Social Capital.     

What leads to official corruption in China? A politico-economic analysis of economic opportunities and government corruption across China’s provinces

This paper investigates the relationship between economic opportunities and official corruption in China. We construct a cross-province sample of corrupted officials to analyse the effects on official corruption of mineral reserve, coal production, real estate and road construction, while including control variables such as population, GDP per capita, economic growth rate, private assets, provincial government capacity, fiscal transparency and distance of the province from Beijing. Spanning from December 2012 to November 2015, our sample contains 526 high-level government officials who worked in various provinces in China. We find through multivariate regression that economic opportunities represented by coal, minerals, real estate and road construction all have a positive and significant effect on official corruption in China at the levels of provincial department director or deputy director; meanwhile, capacity of political extraction, road construction and coal production are better indicators of official corruption at the level of governor or deputy governor.     

自治、博弈与激励:我国农村人居环境污染治理的制度安排

基于中央政府、地方政府及农民的互动视角,采用博弈分析方法,系统考察了我国农村人居环境污染的逻辑机制。研究发现:我国农村人居环境污染的根源在于规制失灵;农村人居环境公共资源的“公地悲剧”不是必然现象,可以在农民之间建立一种自实施的自治机制,避免导致“公地悲剧”;由于利益目标的差异,中央政府与地方政府之间的激励问题、地方政府与农户之间的博弈行为,导致了农村人居环境规制失灵。研究启示是,制度的建立健全是农村人居环境治理顺利推进的保障,更将有利于乡村振兴战略的实施以及我国农村的可持续发展。     

既有大型公建节能改造中的进化博弈论分析

运用进化稳定策略为核心的进化博弈方法,对目前我国既有大型公共建筑节能改造工作进行研究,分析得出政府与产权方之间在节能改造问题中的进化博弈解。     

Corruption and privatization

This paper analyses the relation between corruption and privatization. In particular, we study how corruption affects the acquisition price and the post-privatization market structure. The model predicts that privatization in countries with highly corrupt government results in a higher degree of market concentration than in countries where governments are less corrupt. The acquisition price is also likely to be higher when a government is highly corrupt than when government officials are honest or moderately corrupt. Finally, and perhaps surprisingly, we demonstrate that a stronger propensity to embezzle state revenues may reduce government officials' benefits from corruption. The reason is that the more eager the government officials are to take bribes, the cheaper they are to buy.     

创新型中小企业与商业银行的演化博弈及信贷稳定策略研究

创新型中小企业融资难由来已久,特别是在以间接融资为主的金融环境下如何明晰银企关系,形成与之匹配的信贷策略,是化解企业融资约束的关键。本文首先建立银企演化博弈的理论框架,对创新型中小企业与商业银行的信贷行为演化过程及演化稳定性标准进行探讨,并从创新风险与监管奖惩两个维度构建银企演化博弈模型,分析两类群体在长期信贷博弈中的演化稳定策略。结果表明,银企双方均对高收益策略有模仿倾向,但创新型中小企业在与银行的长期合作中会对少数企业的违约行为具有抵御性;研发创业期企业所受融资约束最高,当且仅当创新成功率高于最小下限时,商业银行才考虑与企业发生信贷关系;政府、信用担保等外部力量与内生要素的相互制衡对实现银企信贷稳定状态具有重要作用。     

政府补贴能促进制造企业数字化转型吗？ ——基于演化博弈的制造企业数字化转型行为分析

推动制造企业数字化转型是做大做强制造业、实现制造业高质量发展的必由之路。Hotelling模型,构建制造企业数字化转型的演化博弈模型,分析了在不同市场竞争强度下政府补贴力度变化对制造企业数字化转型策略选择的影响机理。结果显示,政府补贴能有效激励制造企业进行数字化转型,但只有达到一定的阈值才会发挥作用;激烈的市场竞争会弱化政府补贴的激励效果,且对资金能力较弱的制造企业弱化作用更为明显;数字化转型存在的协同效应能有效推动制造企业选择数字化转型策略,但在市场竞争强度较大时,协同效应表现并不明显。     

奖章与陷阱:渐进转轨中的腐败

中国在1970年代后期开始推进以市场化为导向的改革战略，国民经济和社会福利得到迅速的改善和提高，但腐败现象也比较严重；同时，市场化的推进并未能遏制住腐败的扩散，市场化程度较高的地区反而面临着更为严重的腐败现象。通过分析中国的经济转轨过程，本文对此作出了解释。与其他处于经济转轨过程中的经济体相比，中国经济发展所具有的特殊的制度安排既促成了经济的迅速成长，也引发了普遍的腐败问题。它们包括：经济决策的地方分权、双轨制市场化和集体所有的产权形式，这些要素既提高了官员推动经济增长的激励，也促使许多官员以腐败的形式分享经济增长的红利，而以“关系”为基础的社会文化背景、中央政治权威的稳定性有助于减少官员在抽租过程中对经济增长可能产生的负面影响。另外，我们认为，市场化改革对腐败可能产生两方面效应，一方面，市场化通过培育新型的企业家阶层促使大量资源由市场配置，这有助于减少腐败发生的可能性；另一方面．市场化进程通过促进经济增长提高了经济中的租金总量，这成为诱发寻租行为的因素。最终的净效应取决于政府部门的改革。发生在中国的现象可以归结为政府改革的不彻底性。