While methodologies and survey techniques recorded progress over the years, corruption measurement remains a many-headed monster. Since 2003 and the first publication of Transparency International’s Global Corruption Barometer, researchers have access to population’s feeling about the corruption scourge across institutions. Thereby, wider room emerged for populations’ perceptions in the field o...

This thesis examines the factors that influence perceptions of judicial corruption. A statistical analysis using data from such sources as Transparency International, the World Bank, and Freedom House demonstrates that aspects of accountability (the ability to remove judges) and transparency (freedom of the press) are only weakly related to perceptions of judicial corruption. A systematic count...

We explore theoretically and empirically whether social interaction, including local and global interaction, influences the incidence of corruption. We first present an interaction-based model on corruption that predicts that the level of corruption is positively associated with social interaction. Then we empirically verify the theoretical prediction using within-country evidence at the provin...

Who blames corruption for the poor enforcement of environmental laws? The answer to this question is important since corruption is an important reason why environmental policies are not properly enforced, but previous studies of environmental public opinion do not address the issue. We analyze data from a survey fielded in Brazil in June 2012, immediately preceding the Rio+20 environmental summ...

Previous research stresses that system justifying belief can weaken corruption perception, by this possibly fostering unjust behaviors. However, general results of the effect of general system justification on corruption are ambiguous, indicating also a lessening impact. We conducted a line of studies trying to elucidate these circumstances by testing the effect of general system justification ...

We study bureaucratic corruption in a model in which a constituency sets required levels for a given set of activities. Each activity is carried out by an external provider, and its realization is supervised by a bureaucrat. Bureaucrats are supposed to act on behalf of the constituency, but they can allow providers to deliver lower activity levels than contracted in exchange for a bribe. Given ...

We argue that the decision to bribe bureaucrats depends on the frequency of corruption within a society. We provide a behavioral model to explain this conduct: engaging in corruption results in a disutility of guilt. This implies that people observe a lower probability to be involved in corruption if on average the guilt level of others within a country is higher. We also explore whether and to...

March 2, 2006 Abstract: Indonesia has a tradition of corruption among local officials who harass and collect bribes from firms. Corruption flourished in the Suharto, pre-democracy era. This paper asks whether local democratization that occurred after Suharto reduced corruption and whether specific local politics, over and above the effects of local culture, affect corruption. We have a firm lev...

This research combined three distinctly unique and separate measures of corruption into one corruption factor, so as to yield a robust measurement approach to further understand the political and socioeconomic variables of corruption. The findings show that a strong significant variable in measuring corruption is the personal marginal-tax rate, especially in hierarchical based nations. The high...

Corruption and good governance have been a widely debated topic in the study of emerging democracies worldwide. The importance of considering corruption in new democracies is highlighted by studies showing that corruption is associated with, among others, low trust in political institutions, economic costs and inefficiencies, and low interpersonal trust. This is particularly important for new d...