Theories of Institutional Corruption

Foreword: "Institutional corruption" defined.

Corruption and the Institutional Environment for Growth

Several cross-country studies have found that corruption is detrimental to economic growth, but the findings are not universally robust. We utilize the economic freedom index to examine if corruption can facilitate growth by allowing entrepreneurs to avoid inefficient policies and regulations when economic freedom is limited. Using regression analysis, we find that corruption is growth enhancin...

Institutional Corruption and the Pharmaceutical Industry

Today, the goals of pharmaceutical policy and medical practice are often undermined due to institutional corruption — that is, widespread or systemic practices, usually legal, that undermine an institution’s objectives or integrity. In this symposium, 16 articles investigate the corruption of pharmaceutical policy, each taking a different look at the sources of corruption, how it occurs, and wh...

Comparing Theories of Institutional Change

This paper compares some recent theoretical approaches to conceptualizing institutional change, in an effort to clarify areas of consensus and disagreement regarding the causes, process, and outcomes of institutional change. We do not attempt to build a “new” theory, and our survey is not intended to be comprehensive. Among the theories we discuss, some emphasize spontaneous evolutionary proces...

Institutional Changes: Alternative Theories and Consequences for Institutional Design

This paper surveys alternative approaches to the emergence and evolution of institutions. The challenge is to develop frameworks capable of capturing both stability and change. We follow a “descaling” approach to show how founding assumptions about economics—namely, alternative assumptions about individual rationality and the role of social efficiency— influence our understanding of the drivers...