Punishment offers a powerful mechanism for the maintenance of cooperation in human and animal societies, but the maintenance of costly punishment itself remains problematic. Game theory has shown that corruption, where punishers can defect without being punished themselves, may sustain cooperation. However, in many human societies and some insect ones, high levels of cooperation coexist with lo...

The goal of this paper was to conduct an empirical study on the effects of leadership-corruption on the development of Nigeria. The study is model two theories; the idealistic theory and the anomie theory. The study sought among others: to ascertain the relationship between leadership corruption and development in Nigeria. To assess the extent to which leadership corruption affects service deli...

There is increasing interest among health policymakers, planners and donors in how corruption affects health care access and outcomes, and what can be done to combat corruption in the health sector. Efforts to explain the risk of abuse of entrusted power for private gain have examined the links between corruption and various aspects of management, financing and governance. Behavioural scientist...

Non-collusive corruption, i.e., corruption that imposes an additional burden on business activity, is particularly widespread in low-income countries. We build a macroeconomic model with credit market imperfections and heterogeneous agents to explore the roots and consequences of this type of corruption. We find that credit market imperfections, by generating rents for the incumbent entrepreneu...

About the P About the P About the P About the P About the Policy Briefs olicy Briefs olicy Briefs olicy Briefs olicy Briefs This year the Crawford School of Economics and Government established an exciting series of Policy Briefs that provide three opinion pieces by researchers on a particular theme or topic. These briefs are designed to provide introductions into key public policy areas that a...

Most theoretical studies of corruption develop micro models of individual acts while empirical papers study corruption at the country level. We build an agent-based model to provide the missing link between these two groups. Here the societal corruption level is derived from individual corruption levels optimally chosen by agents with varying risk aversion and human capital. It, in turn, affect...

Corruption, Shadow Economy and Income Inequality: Evidence from Asia A number of recent studies for Latin America show that as the size of the informal economy grows, corruption is less harmful to inequality. We investigate if this relationship is equally compelling for developing countries in Asia where corruption, inequality and shadow economies are considerably large. We use Panel Least Squa...

The views expressed in this Working Paper are those of the author(s) and do not necessarily represent those of the IMF or IMF policy. Working Papers describe research in progress by the author(s) and are published to elicit comments and to further debate. There is increasing recognition that corruption has substantial, adverse effects on economic growth. But if the costs of corruption are so hi...

Corruption is a serious problem in Asia and elsewhere. Harrison and Vinod's (1992) confidence interval for the marginal excess burden (MEB) of taxation is used to estimates the economic harm arising from corruption. One dollar of corruption is estimated to impose a burden of $1.67, which becomes very large when compounded over time. After a brief review of economic theory, this paper uses data ...