Corruption in public service delivery: An experimental analysis

To improve our understanding of corruption in service delivery, we use a newly designed game that allows us to investigate the effects of the institutional environment on the behavior of service providers and their monitors. We focus on the effect of four different factors: whether monitors are accountable to the service recipients, the degree of observability of service providers’ effort, the providers’ wages and the providers’ professional norms. In accordance with theory, we find that service providers perform better when monitors are elected by service recipients and when their effort is more easily observed. However, there is only weak evidence that service providers perform better when paid more. Monitors are more vigilant when elected and when service providers are paid more. Playing the game with Ethiopian nursing students, we also find that those with greater exposure to the Ethiopian public health sector perform less well, either as provider or as monitor, when the experiment is framed as a public health provision scenario, suggesting that experience and norms affect behavior.     

Corruption and public debt: a cross-country analysis

Using data from a large panel of countries over the period 1995–2015, this article empirically investigates the effect of corruption on public debt. Overall, the estimates reveal that corruption increases public debt. The effect, however, appears to be heterogeneous across income-related sample splits: it is stronger for advanced economies, but weaker and less statistically robust for less-developed countries, where external factors such as foreign aid may also affect public debt. The analysis suggests the inadequacy of conventional wisdom assuming that more detrimental fiscal effects of corruption arise in low-income countries.     

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.     

Labor taxation, public finance, and wage determination: evidence from OECD countries

This paper analyzes the relationship between unemployment, average effective labour tax rates and public spending in 17 OECD countries. The focus is on the degree of centralization and cooperation in wage setting. Estimation results from a dynamic time-series-cross-section model suggest that the countries where wage setting takes place at the firm level have used labour taxes less extensively in financing welfare spending, compared to countries with centralized or decentralized bargaining. This is consistent with another finding, according to which labour taxes distort the labour demand the least in the countries with firm level bargaining.     

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.     

论加大财政对社会保障的投入是构建和谐社会的基础

人权中最首要的、最基础的是生存权。加大财政对社会保障的投入，使社会保障有坚强稳定的资金支持，有利于从根本上维护我国公民的基本生存权，从而为我国的人权事业和构建和谐社会提供经济和制度保障。     

政府公共支出结构对腐败的影响效应分析

政府公共支出结构是影响腐败的主要经济因素之一。本文建立腐败的客观衡量指标,采用固定效应模型,定量分析政府公共支出结构及政府支出规模、市场化程度、教育水平、工资水平以及经济发展水平等对腐败的影响,研究结果表明:减少寻租性支出、提高生产性支出对腐败有着显著的抑制作用,同时控制政府支出规模、提高私有化程度对反腐败也有显著正效应;提高人均收入水平和经济增长率对腐败存在着预期的负效应,但在统计上并不显著;教育水平和政府公务员相对工资的提高不利于反腐败,这与大多数实证分析的结果相反。     

浅论IMF的缺陷及改革

IMF在促进国际货币合作,促进国际贸易的扩大和平衡发展,促进国际汇兑的稳定,制定国际收支与汇率的规则与秩序等方面,发挥了重要的作用。但作为国际金融危机拯救者的IMF,在维护国际金融稳定与发展中尚存有诸多缺陷,面对当今国际金融界新的形势和其自身的软肋,IMF的改革势在必行。     

Crash for cash: Offshore financial destinations and IMF programs

A growing body of literature scrutinizes the harmful consequences of capital flight to offshore financial destinations. While financial integration is a well-known facilitator of capital flight, we shed light on an under-appreciated determinant—the availability of an IMF bailout. Expanding on previous literature analyzing moral hazard in the context of IMF programs, we introduce a socially even more destructive mechanism that we label the ‘crash for cash’ effect. We argue that by drawing on the IMF, elites can benefit from accumulating excessive debt to extract rents and hide these safely in offshore financial destinations while steering their countries into financial disaster. To test this mechanism, we show that elite wealth in offshore bank accounts has a first-order impact on a captured government’s willingness to draw on a lender of last resort. From a policy perspective, our analysis underscores the importance of closing financial loopholes to mitigate the devastating socio-economic effects of sophisticated financial engineering in a financially integrated global economy.     

IMF conditionality and central bank independence

This paper studies the role of the International Monetary Fund (IMF) in promoting central bank independence (CBI). While anecdotal evidence suggests that the IMF has been playing a vital role for CBI, the underlying mechanisms of this influence are not well understood. We argue that the IMF has ulterior motives when pressing countries for increased CBI. First, IMF loans are primarily transferred to local monetary authorities. Thus, enhancing CBI aims to insulate central banks from political interference to shield loan disbursements from government abuse. Second, several loan conditionality clauses imply a substantial transfer of political leverage over economic policy making to monetary authorities. As a result, the IMF through pushing for CBI seeks to establish a politically insulated veto player to promote its economic policy reform agenda. We argue that the IMF achieves these aims through targeted lending conditions. We hypothesize that the inclusion of these loan conditions leads to greater CBI. To test our hypothesis, we use a recently available dataset on IMF programs that includes detailed information on CBI reforms and IMF conditionality for up to 124 countries between 1980 and 2012. Our findings indicate that targeted loan conditionality plays a critical role in promoting CBI. These results are robust towards varying modeling assumptions and withstand a battery of robustness checks.     

Adoption of an IMF programme and debt rescheduling. An empirical analysis

The existence of an empirical relationship between the adoption of an IMF programme and the concession of a debt rescheduling by commercial creditors is tested using a bivariate probit model. If countries who have arrangements with the IMF are more likely than others to obtain a rescheduling of their external debt, we could conclude that the adoption of an IMF programme could work as a sort of signal of a country's “good intent” which is thus rewarded with the debt relief. The results confirm the existence of a significant effect of the adoption of an IMF programme on the subsequent concession of a debt rescheduling by private creditors.     

如何降低科技行政审批腐败发生率——模型、机理与实现路径

科技行政审批在缺乏有效的制度约束下，极易引发腐败行为。通过构建科技行政审批与腐败发生率关联机理模型，经过相关性分析、内在一致性与EFA检验以及二阶验证性因素分析，拟合出结构方程模型路径系数。结果显示，市场激励型科技行政审批能够直接影响腐败发生率，命令控制型科技行政审批与市场激励型科技行政审批都可以通过科技行政审批人员滋生消极腐败的公共服务动机进而产生腐败行为，市场化程度提升带来的外在影响相对于内在公共服务动机变异对于腐败发生率增加的影响表现得更加显著。因此，针对不同类型科技行政审批，可实施差异化腐败预防控制机制，转变审批人员公共服务动机，阻断腐败发生的中介，深化科技行政审批制度改革，推进审批制度化、标准化、规范化建设，精简优化科技行政审批流程，提高审批集约化程度，以效能提升倒逼腐败发生率下降。     

财政学教学改革探讨

财政学作为一门专业基础课,其基本理论和分析方法对我国建立和完善社会主义市场经济体制具有重要的意义,一直以来都是教育部确定的高等学校经济类专业的核心课程。因此,精通教学内容、完善教学方法、运用教学技巧,教授学生掌握财政学的理论体系和精髓是财政学教师义不容辞的责任。文章分析了该课程的特色及在目前教学中普遍存在的一些问题,并提出了财政学教学改革的若干建议。     

为什么要加强对"国有资本财政"的研究

从近几年来的研究动态看,无论是财政理论界还是政府财政职能部门,关注的热点大多集中在如何建立“公共财政”上,把单一的“公共财政”作为与我国社会主义市场经济相适应的唯一目标模式。我国是以公有制为主体的国家,存在着面广量大的国有资产,这就决定了国有资产总量中除了非市场赢利性的部分外,还包含了巨额的经营性国有资产,因而我国在市场赢利性的国有经济基础上就必然相应产生“国有资本财政”。因此,由公共财政与国有资本财政所构成的国家财政必然要实行“双重(元)结构财政”模式,这是适应我国经济体制转轨特征和需要的财政运行模式。作为其重要组成部分的国有资本财政是社会主义市场经济的必然选择。加强对国有资本财政问题的研究有利于“双重(元)结构财政”模式的理论建构;有利于巩固我国公有制的主体地位;有利于矫正国有资本财政“越位”与公共财政“缺位”并存的格局;有利于澄清国有资本在市场竞争领域进与退的理论误区。     

Corruption and Policy: Back to the Roots

Corruption is now recognized to be a pervasive phenomenon that can seriously jeopardize the best-intentioned reform efforts. This paper presents an analytical framework for examining the role basic market institutions play in rent-seeking and illicit behavior. The empirical results suggest that high barriers to new business entry and soft budget constraints on incumbent firms are particularly important institutional factors engendering opportunities for corruption. The findings also support the notion that economic development and maturation of democratic processes both temper corruption, as does, to a lesser extent, openness to international trade.     

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.     

Corruption and military spending

Anecdotal evidence relates corruption with high levels of military spending. This paper tests empirically whether such a relationship exists. The empirical analysis is based on data from four different sources for up to 120 countries during 1985–1998. The association between military spending and corruption is investigated by using cross-section and panel regression techniques. The results suggest that corruption is associated with higher military spending as a share of both GDP and total government spending, as well as with arms procurement in relation to GDP and total government spending. The results can be interpreted as evidence that defense spending may be used as a component of an indicator of the quality of governance.     

Corruption and wage inequality?

Does corruption aggravate wage-inequality? We try to answer this question in terms of a general equilibrium model where both skilled and unskilled workers participate in corruption. Corruption in our model diverts resources from the productive sectors. Factor intensities within the productive sectors and between production and corruption activities determine the wage impact of corruption. Lower degree of corruption may increase wage-inequality although the size of the corruption sector definitely contracts.     

Performative global finance: bridging micro and macro approaches with a stratified perspective

Theories of performativity can enhance the study of global finance. Taking everyday financial practices seriously, they emphasise the potentially structuring effects and disciplinary nature of finance, and foreground the performative role of economics, financial models, and formulas. It has remained largely overlooked to date that the literature on the performativity of finance can be divided into two distinct approaches. ‘Microperformativity’ is the more actor-oriented approach, beginning its analysis with the exploration of agencements and their practices, or the examination of the social history of mathematical formulas in finance. ‘Macroperformativity’, in contrast, takes its point of departure from the social structure of finance itself, often in relation to national, international, or global power structures. Neither approach provides for an intermediary concept that more explicitly links the micro and macro level. Nor does either approach give adequate analytical consideration to social conflicts and power struggles. To fill these gaps, the paper applies poststructural hegemony theory to reconceptualise performativity as an articulatory logic which accounts for the transition of a particularity towards a universality within a framework of stratified hegemony. Framed accordingly, the concept of performativity accounts more strongly for the social and political processes, ruptures, contestations and contradictions in global finance.     

On Corruption and Countervailing Actions in Three South Asian Nations

We argue that readily available data and information in newspaper stories enable one to discern the nature and patterns of corruption and to understand actions taken to combat corruption. We analyze and compare numerous newspaper reports of corruption in India, Sri Lanka, and Bangladesh. Using analysis derived from existing theory of corruption, we demonstrate how information in news accounts improves our understanding of corruption. Bangladesh had more coercive corruption, with countervailing actions dominated by direct actions of victims. In India and Sri Lanka, corruption was generally collusive, with countervailing actions on behalf of victims frequently leading to legal actions and investigative reports.