Crime, police corruption and development: evidence from victimization data
NUPI (Norwegian Institute of International Affairs) Working Paper n° 772, 2009, with Jens ANDVIG
Recently economists have begun to study various aspects of public sector institutions (with their behavioral neighborhoods) and their effects on the long run economic development. Degrees of corruption, rule of law and protection of property rights have all apparently significant economic impact. These results are all based on the construction of indicators for these difficult-to-observe explanatory variable complexes. In most cases the indicators applied have been developed for most countries and have on the one hand ‘nice’ statistical properties when embedded in regression equations, but on the other hand are conceptually fuzzy with unclear relationships to basic observations. In this paper we go through many of the same relationships, but based on international efforts to collect questionnaire information about citizens’ experience with crime and police corruption. This information is more conceptually distinct and likely to be more closely related to relevant experience, but proves on the other hand less amenable to econometric analysis. Despite the latter weakness we have found it worthwhile to pursue it in order to complement the indicator- based approaches.Is corruption contagious: an econometric analysis.
NUPI (Norwegian Institute of International Affairs) Working Paper n° 742, 2008.
In this paper, I analyze how corruption in one country may be affected by its neighbors' corruption. It seeks to explain why corruption is perpetuating in large geographical areas populated by developing countries despite anticorruption efforts made in the single country. In our empirical approach, we capture the spatial dependency by regional corruption. Three main techniques are used: spatial autocorrelation tests, GMM and three stage least squares. Our results show that, a lower regional corruption (as measured by the average of the level of corruption in one country's neighbors) is associated with a lower level of national corruption. Among the potential mechanisms explaining this correlation, the level of economic development (GDP per capita) seems to be the most important. Foreign aid and trade openness show less clear results. Noneconomic mechanisms such as cross-country contagion processes of voice expressions and demands on accountability are other possible transmission mechanisms.Aide publique au développement et transition fiscale
Etudes et Documents du CERDI E2008.16, 2008
This paper aims to analyze the impact of official development assistance (ODA) on tax transition in developing countries. First, we build qualitative indicators of tax transition taking into account the level as well as the composition of public revenue. Second, we provide theoretical explanations of how ODA can affect tax transition in an environment characterized by several divergent social interests. Te third step consists in econometrically analyzing the relationship between official development assistance and tax transition. Basing our estimates on a sample consisted of 106 developing countries over the period 1980-2005, we find that official development assistance significantly accelerates the transition and even more sustains it for at least five years. This result is robust to several specifications based on alternative measures of both foreign aid and tax transition.Corruption, taxation and growth : theory and evidence
Etudes et Documents du CERDI E2008.25, 2008
In this paper, we analyze the interaction between corruption, taxation and economic growth. Our contributions are twofold. Theoretically, in an endogenous growth model, we introduce corruption in two different ways: corruption in the public expenditure and corruption in the public revenue. We show two opposing effects. Under certain conditions, corruption can affect growth rate positively but it can also exert a negative effect via fiscal revenue. Not only does it tend to make the tax rate, which maximizes the long run growth rate sub-optimal, but it can also create distortions that can lead to excessive tax rates harmful to growth. The empirical analyses are based on non parametric estimates as well as econometric investigations. Our results support the assumption of a non linear relationship between public resources and growth. Interactions between public resources and institutional variables evidence the following the results: (i) the more countries are corrupt the stronger the negative effects of taxation on the growth (ii) Once the negative effects of corruption are accounted for, our data do not support a potential positive effect of corruption on economic growth.Etudes et Documents du CERDI E2008.11, 2008
In this paper, we examine the microeconomic determinants of the perception of corruption in twelve Sub-Saharan African countries. Unlike the indicators of corruption based on the opinion of international experts, the study focuses on corrupt practices as experienced by the African people themselves. The results of our estimates, using an ordered probit indicate that the individual characteristics such as age and sex significantly affect the perception people have of corruption as do social and political factors like access to information (press, media, radio). However, neither democracy nor participation in demonstrations, seem to affect the attitude of individuals towards corruption.