E-Government as an anti-corruption strategy

This paper estimates the impact of e-government on the “control of corruption” indicator using a panel of 149 countries with two time observations (). The first differenced estimator yields a positive and economically interesting effect. By the most conservative estimate, moving from the 10th percentile to the 90th percentile in the e-government distribution implies a reduction in corruption equivalent to moving from the 10th percentile to the 23rd percentile in the control of corruption distribution. Invoking external instruments, IV results are (statistically) similar.     

Common political culture: Evidence on regional corruption contagion

Although there are indications of common regional corruption characteristics, empirical studies of corruption have assumed that influences on corruption are country-specific. In this paper we report evidence based on a cross-section of 123 economies confirming that, with few specific exceptions, corruption is a regional phenomenon. Institutional change that reduces corruption in one country affects, therefore, neighboring countries.     

The interaction effect of economic freedom and democracy on corruption: A panel cross-country analysis

This paper examines the effects of economic freedom, democracy and its interaction term on controlling corruption. Interactive results indicate that economic freedom and democracy significantly combat corruption. Economic freedom reduces corruption in any political environment. Democracy increases corruption when economic liberalization is low.     

The political economy of corruption and the role of economic opportunities1

In many developing and transition countries, we observe rather high levels of corruption. We argue that the missing political support for anti‐corruption policies is due to a lack of economic and financial reforms. Our model is based on the fact that corrupt officials have to pay entry fees to get lucrative positions. In a probabilistic voting model, we show that this, together with the lack of economic opportunities, makes anti‐corruption policies less likely. Compared to a reformed economy, more voters are part of the corrupt system and, more importantly, rents from corruption are distributed differently. Economic liberalization increases the support for anti‐corruption measures. The additional effect of financial liberalization is ambiguous.     

外汇体制、税收与腐败

本文研究了外汇体制、税收和腐败之间的关系,比较了在有外汇管制和无外汇管制两种情况下,外汇体制对税收和腐败的影响。研究结果表明,当腐败对产出有正作用时,外汇管制将导致较高的税收和较严重的腐败。如果腐败对产出的正作用较小,那么外汇管制将导致税收增加。如果税收扭曲的作用非常大,那么外汇管制将导致腐败下降。当腐败对产出有负作用时,外汇管制将会导致较轻微的腐败和较高的税收。如果腐败对产出的正作用非常大,足以弥补由于高税收所造成的产出减少时,政府会采取外汇管制措施。如果腐败对产出的正作用较小,并且高税收对产出负作用很大,那么政府将采取没有外汇管制的体制。     

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.     

Populism and the return of the “Paranoid Style”: Some evidence and a simple model of demand for incompetence as insurance against elite betrayal

We present a simple model of populism as the rejection of “disloyal” leaders. We show that adding the assumption that people are worse off when they experience low income as a result of leader betrayal (than when it is the result of bad luck) to a simple voter choice model yields a preference for incompetent leaders even if all leaders have the same underlying probability of betrayal. These deliver worse material outcomes in general, but they reduce the feelings of betrayal during bad times. Some evidence consistent with our model is gathered from the Trump–Clinton 2016 election: on average, subjects primed with the importance of competence in policymaking decrease their support for Trump, the candidate who scores lower on competence in our survey (even amongst Trump supporters). But two groups respond to the treatment with a large (approximately 5 percentage points) increase in their support for Donald Trump: those living in rural areas and those that are low educated, white and living in urban and suburban areas.     

Empirical linkages between good governance and national well-being

This paper brings together the largest available sets of national-level data, covering 157 countries over the years 2005–2012, to assess the extent to which governance quality contributes to life evaluations. Our most significant new finding is that changes in governance quality within a policy-relevant time horizon can lead to significant changes in the quality of life. For example, the ten most-improved countries, in terms of changes in government service delivery quality between 2005 and 2012, when compared to the ten most-worsened countries, are estimated to have average life evaluations higher by 0.4 points on a 0 to 10 scale. The results also confirm earlier findings that service delivery quality generally dominates democratic quality in supporting better lives until delivery quality has reached sufficient levels. The situation changes as development proceeds, with democratic quality showing a positive influence among countries that have already achieved higher quality of service delivery.     

卖空的事前威慑、公司治理与高管隐性腐败

本文以我国融资融券的分步扩容为准自然实验,考察卖空的事前威慑对高管隐性腐败的治理效应及其作用机制,并分析不同公司治理环境下卖空机制作用的差异。研究结果表明,卖空的事前威慑能够有效抑制高管隐性腐败行为,显著降低在职消费水平,尤其是超额在职消费,并且卖空机制对高管隐性腐败的治理效应在国有企业中更为显著。进一步地,通过剖析卖空治理效应的作用机制,发现卖空机制加强了外部投资者和股东的监督作用,并促使公司提高了高管权益薪酬比重,使得高管与股东共担卖空导致的股价下跌风险,从而有效约束了高管的隐性腐败。此外,卖空机制的治理效应依赖于成熟的市场化环境,即只有在市场化水平较高的地区,卖空机制才能更有效地发挥其治理作用。而卖空机制与公司内部治理之间具有“替代效应”,当公司内部治理失灵时,卖空机制能够代替内部治理来规制高管的隐性腐败。本文不仅拓宽了卖空机制治理效应的有关研究,为我国放松卖空管制提供了微观的经验证据,而且为治理高管腐败提供了新思路。     

Corruption and natural resource rents: evidence from quantile regression

This study examines the impacts of oil rents on corruption for 157 countries. While existing studies have primarily focused on average effects, we employ quantile regression to estimate the effects of natural resource abundance for different corruption levels. We consider the effects of natural resource rents, mainly oil rents and then compare them with those of total and non-oil natural resources rents. The estimation results show that, generally, more oil rents increase corruption. Specifically, impacts are larger in countries with an intermediate level of corruption and smaller in highly corrupt countries. While total resource rents increase corruption significantly, non-oil resource rents do not. This may be due to non-oil resource rent management (mainly inland) being more subject to public scrutiny. Non-oil natural resources are concentrated in the less-developed sub-Saharan African countries, where corruption is prevalent; therefore, the impacts of natural resource rents are unremarkable.