This paper discusses the possible causes and consequences of corruption. It provides a synthetic review of recent studies that analyze this phenomenon empirically. In addition, it presents further results on the effects of corruption on growth and investment, and new cross-country evidence on the link between corruption and the composition of government expenditure.
This paper discusses the possible causes and consequences of corruption. It provides a synthetic review of recent studies that analyze this phenomenon empirically. In addition, it presents further results on the effects of corruption on growth and investment, and new cross-country evidence on the link between corruption and the composition of government expenditure.
The recently-adopted OECD convention outlawing bribery of foreign public officials is welcome evidence of how much progress has been made in the battle against corruption. The financial crisis in East Asia is an indication of how much remains to be done. Corruption is by no means a new issue but it has only recently emerged as a global issue. With the end of the Cold War, the pace and breadth of the trends toward democratization and international economic integration accelerated and expanded globally. Yet corruption could slow or even reverse these trends, potentially threatening economic development and political stability in some countries. As the global implications of corruption have grown, so has the impetus for international action to combat it. In addition to efforts in the OECD, the Organization of American States, the World Trade Organization, and the United Nations General Assembly, the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund have both begun to emphasize corruption as an impediment to economic development. This book includes a chapter by the Chairman of the OECD Working Group on Bribery discussing the evolution of the OECD convention and what is needed to make it effective. Other chapters address the causes and consequences of corruption, including the impact on investment and growth and the role of multinational corporations in discouraging bribery. The final chapter summarizes and also discusses some of the other anticorruption initiatives that either have been or should be adopted by governments, multilateral development banks, and other international organizations.
Corruption, particularly political or “grand” corruption, distorts the entire decision-making process connected with public investment projects. The degree of distortions is higher with weaker auditing institutions. The evidence presented shows that higher corruption is associated with (i) higher public investment; (ii) lower government revenues; (iii) lower expenditures on operations and maintenance; and (iv) lower quality of public infrastructure. The evidence also shows that corruption increases public investment while reducing its productivity. These are five channels through which corruption lowers growth. An implication is that economists should be more restrained in their praise of high public sector investment, especially in countries with high corruption.
This volume presents 18 IMF research studies on the causes and consequences of corruption, as well as how it can most effectively be combated to improve governance, increase economic growth, and reduce poverty. The authors examine how civil service wages affect corruption, the impact of natural resource availability on corruption, the impact of corruption on a country’s income distribution and incidence of poverty, and the effect of corruption on government expenditures on health and education.
"This paper considers the effects of corruption and government spending on economic growth. It starts from an endogenous growth model and extends it to account for the detrimental effects of corruption on the potentially productive components of government spending, namely military and investment spending. The resulting model is estimated on a sample of African countries and the results show, first, that the growth rate is strongly influenced by the interaction between corruption and military burden, with the interaction between corruption and government investment expenditure having a weaker effect. Second, allowing for the cyclical economic fluctuations in specific countries leaves the estimated elasticities close to those of the full sample. Third, there are significant conditioning variables that need to be taken into account, namely the form of government, political instability and natural resource endowment. These illustrate the cross country heterogeneity when accounting for quantitative direct and indirect effects of key variables on economic growth. Overall, these findings suggest important policy implications"--Publisher description.
In some countries, corrupt politicians appear to choose investment projects based on the opportunity for bribes and kickbacks these projectspresent. This paper contends that such corruption increases the numberof capital projects undertaken and trends to enlarge their size andcomplexity. The result is that, paradoxically, some public investmentcan end up reducing a country's growth.
This paper demonstrates that high and rising corruption increases income inequality and poverty by reducing economic growth, the progressivity of the tax system, the level and effectiveness of social spending, and the formation of human capital, and by perpetuating an unequal distribution of asset ownership and unequal access to education. These findings hold for countries with different growth experiences, at different stages of development, and using various indices of corruption. An important implication of these results is that policies that reduce corruption will also lower income inequality and poverty.
This pamphlet focuses exclusively on corrupt public practices. It liststhe potential causes and consequences of public corruption and presentsrecent evidence on the extent to which corruption affects investment,economic growth, and government expenditure choices. The evidence presented here suggests that corruption may have considerable adverseeffects on economic growth by reducing private investment and perhaps byworsening the composition of public expenditure.
Seminar paper from the year 2010 in the subject Business economics - Miscellaneous, grade: 1,0, Berlin School of Economics (Global Governance), language: English, abstract: During the last decades, corruption became an important topic. About twenty years ago the issue started to gain increasing attention. Different Organization engage in the fight against corruption. This is a remarkable change compared to the situation before the 1990s. Back then, most people did not see it as a pressing problem. Actually, it was more seen as an integral part of doing business. Most European countries allowed for tax deductibility of bribes. Even the World Bank, not constricted by such national concerns, was avoiding the topic. The changed perception of corruption has manifold reasons. Foremost, the geopolitical situation changed remarkably. During the cold war, governments, despite their corruptness, were supported to make sure they were not joining the communist bloc. After the end of this ideological competition, the imperative to tolerate and not to address issues like corruption and abuse of political power ceased to exist. Last, but not less important, the USA, not constraint by geopolitical considerations, had economic interest to put the topic on the agenda. While for US-companies bribing abroad was forbidden, most other developed countries used graft to initiate business abroad. Therefore, the US had a special interest to push for anti-corruption laws to level the playing field for its companies. From a western normative and moral point of view this fight against corruption on the international level seems to be a desirable development. However, if those were the only reasons for this crusade, it could be misperceived as another example of the imposition of rules from the Global North on the Global South. Then again, if corruption has negative impacts, other than moral concerns, it would legitimize this movement. Prevailing corruption might influence the development and e
