There is a growing appreciation among economists of the need to better understand the role that corruption plays in real-world economies. Although some have argued that it can be welfare enhancing (Nathaniel Leff, 1964), most commentators believe that a willingness to accept bribes (or similar forms of corruption) in either the public or the private sector reduces economic efŽ ciency (Andrei Sh...

Political Science. This paper benefited greatly from comments from Geof Wood and discussions with J. Allister McGregor at the Centre for Development Studies, University of Bath and later with Eric Worby in Bangladesh. It began life as a report commissioned by the Swedish International Development Agency (SIDA), but the views represented here are those of the author alone. Summary This paper bri...

Despite widespread belief that membership in the World Trade Organization (WTO) improves the quality of governance, there is no convincing empirical evidence. Here, we investigate whether WTO membership has a causal effect on firm-level reports of political corruption using a nonparametric partial identification approach to bound the average treatment effect (ATE). We also analyze conditional A...

Why is corruption—defined here as the misuse of public office for private gain—perceived to be more widespread in some countries than others? Different theories associate cross-national variation in the extent of corruption with particular historical and cultural traditions, levels of economic development, political institutions, and government policies. This paper analyzes which of various pla...

This paper develops a game-theoretic model of “petty corruption”by government o¢ cials. Such corruption is widespread, especially (but not only) in developing and transition economies. The model goes beyond the previously published studies in the way it describes the structure of bureaucratic “tracks,”and the information among the participants. Entrepreneurs apply, in sequence, to a “track” of ...

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...