Time preferences,cognitive abilities and intrinsic motivation to exert effort

The experimental literature has found a positive relationship between patience and performance in cognitive tests that are not incentivized by money. It has also been shown that unincentivized cognitive tests capture not only cognitive ability (CA), but also intrinsic motivation related to the test takers’ personality traits. In order to determine whether the relationship between patience and test scores is driven by intrinsic motivation or CA, we run an experiment in which subjects take either incentivized or unincentivized cognitive tests. We find that while incentivized test scores positively correlate with patience, the unincentivized scores are not related to the time preferences of our subjects. The observed correlation between patience and cognitive test scores therefore seems to be driven by CA rather than by intrinsic motivation related to personality traits.     

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.     

Corruption, inflation and growth

We present a model in which the embezzlement of tax revenues by public officials leads the government to rely more on seigniorage to finance its expenditures. This raises inflation which depresses investment and growth via a cash-in-advance constraint.     

Corruption, Income Distribution, and Growth

This paper uses an encompassing framework developed by Murphy et al. (1991, 1993) to study corruption and how it affects income distribution and growth. We find that (1) corruption affects income distribution in an inverted U-shaped way, (2) corruption alone also explains a large proportion of the Gini differential across developing and industrial countries, and (3) after correcting for measurement errors, corruption seems to retard economic growth. But the effect is far less pronounced than the one found in Mauro (1995). Moreover, corruption alone explains little of the continental growth differentials. In countries where the asset distribution is less equal, corruption is associated with a smaller increase in income inequality and a larger drop in growth rates.     

Inflation, Inflation Variability, and Corruption

We present a model where agents can inflate the cost of goods needed to start an investment project and inflation variability increases monitoring costs. We show that inflation variability can lead to higher corruption and lower investment. We document a positive relationship between corruption and inflation variability in a sample of 75 countries. The effect is robust to the inclusion of country fixed effects, other controls, and 2SLS estimation. The results are economically significant: a one standard deviation increase in inflation variance from the median increases corruption by 12 percent of a standard deviation and reduces growth by 0.33 percentage points. Our paper highlights a new channel through which inflation reduces investment and growth, thus bridging the perception gap over the costs of inflation between economists and the public. We also find evidence that political competition reduces corruption and that corruption is pro-cyclical.     

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,growth, and growth volatility

While the existing studies focus on the corruption–growth relationship, this paper introduces a new focus involving corruption and growth volatility. The Ehrlich–Lui (1999) framework provides the theoretical background of the paper, which produces testable hypotheses regarding the corruption–growth and the corruption–growth volatility relationship. The cross-section dataset that is used in the empirical analysis contains 121 developed and developing countries. In terms of the relationship between the governance-related variables and growth rates, only corruption control and government effectiveness significantly and adversely affect the average growth rate. Regarding the relationship between growth volatility and governance-related variables, the results suggest that higher corruption control, expropriation risk control, government effectiveness, and government consumption decrease growth volatility.     

行政垄断、寻租与腐败——转型经济的腐败机理分析

本文试图利用寻租经济学的方法，对中国渐进转型过程中所产生的特有的腐败形式——行政垄断的本质、成因、形式、特征进行了分析；基于现有对转型经济中腐败现象的研究，提出了转型经济中腐败现象的新的分类；并对行政垄断，主要是行业垄断的经济损失规模及租金的耗散等问题进行了初步的研究；最后，回顾了中国反垄断改革的进展，并提出了进一步改革的议程。     

Corruption: The good,the bad,and the uncertain

This paper argues that the relationship between corruption and economic growth is dependent upon the uncertainty involved. Employing data on a cross‐section of countries, this paper uses an interaction between the frequency of bribery payments and the uncertainty regarding the delivery of the service in exchange for these bribes to show that corruption has a negative association with growth unless the uncertainty is minimal. Furthermore, the negative association becomes larger in magnitude with higher levels of uncertainty. At extremely high levels of uncertainty a relatively small increase in corruption, equivalent to moving from Sweden to the United States for example, is associated with economically large decreases in economic growth.     

Corruption,Financial Resources and Exports

This paper argues that a country's comparative advantage in exports depends on both the factor abundance and the allocation efficiency of the endowments. However, the latter is not considered in the traditional Heckscher–Ohlin model. In line with the “sand” view of corruption, this paper empirically studies the role of corruption in shaping a country's export pattern by distorting the allocation of financial resources. We find that the resource misallocation resulting from corruption undermines the export growth promoted by the positive external financial shock. The negative effects are realized by the extensive margins instead of the intensive margins of heterogeneous firms.     

道德文化、腐败与经济转型——对中国转型期一个基于道德腐败的经济学分析

在现有的经济学文献中 ,对腐败问题的讨论 ,规避道德文化的思路并不能令人满意地解释实际中存在的问题。本文建立了一个关于道德腐败的模型解释腐败活动猖獗的原因 ,并根据历史上成功经验和教训给出相应的政策建议。本文认为 ,个体的社会道德观念、行为在社会中相互影响。这样就可以建立一个动态的模型解释基于道德导致腐败规模变化的原因。本文最主要的结论是 :存在着一个“道德腐败陷阱”。从这一点出发 ,本文认为 ,从根本上有效抑制腐败单靠加强执法、加大对腐败的惩罚力度等传统的、事后的打击腐败措施是不够的 ,要制定和实施综合的反腐战略 ,其中关键是要建立一个全社会的事前监督、检举腐败的从国家到公民的“信誉机制”。     

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.     

中国转型期腐败和反腐败问题研究(下篇)

作者认为，经过艰苦探索，党和政府已经找到了在改革开放和建设社会主义现代化建设的新的历史条件下有效遇止腐败的新路，即依靠体制改革和制度创新从源头上预防和治理腐败并在这方面取得了可喜的成就。最后，笔者就中国下一步如何进行反腐败体制改革和制度创新，从治理和善治的角度提出了一整套政策性建议。     

经济增长、腐败与收入不平等

本文利用我国1978²012年的时间序列数据,研究了经济增长和腐败对收入不平等的影响。研究发现,腐败扩大了居民收入差距,而经济增长则有利于缩小收入分配差距。因此,通过预防和惩治腐败,减少行政权力对经济和社会资源的垄断,降低行政权力对市场的干预力度,稳步推进政治体制改革,加强对行政权力的民主监督;同时,继续深化市场化改革,加快经济发展,提高居民收入占国民收入的比重,是缩小收入分配差距的关键。     

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.     

Tax Evasion,Corruption and Market Entry

We analyze the impact of tax policy on the market entry of firms in the presence of corruption and tax evasion. In a world with corruption, firms must bribe corrupt officials to enter the market. For a given level of bribes, higher tax rates and stricter enforcement of taxation decrease tax evasion but typically reduce market entry. However, when the level of bribes reacts to tax policy, higher taxes and stricter enforcement of taxation can have a double benefit. Up to a certain threshold, for which we develop a simple rule, stricter enforcement increases market entry and reduces tax evasion.     

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.     

Democracy,Rule of Law,Corruption Incentives,and Growth

We bridge the gap between the standard theory of growth and the mostly static theory of corruption. Some public investment can be diverted from its purpose by corrupt individuals. Voters determine the level of public investment subject to an incentive constraint equalizing the returns from productive and corrupt activities. We concentrate on two exogenous institutional parameters: the “technology of corruption” is the ease with which rent‐seekers can capture a proportion of public spending. The “concentration of political power” is the extent to which rent‐seekers have more political influence than other people. One theoretical prediction is that the effects of the two institutional parameters on income growth and equilibrium corruption are different according to the constraints that are binding at equilibrium. In particular, the effect of judicial quality on growth should be stronger when political power is concentrated. We estimate a system of equations where both corruption and income growth are determined simultaneously and show that income growth is more affected by our proxies for legal and political institutions in countries where political rights and judicial institutions, respectively, are limited.