An analysis of corruption: the American continent versus Romania

Corruption has become one of the most vicious mass phenomena, affecting, in most cases, the general wealth of the population. The paper closely surveys a set of measurable variables which have a very high impact over the dimensions of corruption as a phenomenon. Two of the aforementioned variables are part of a bureaucratic component, specific to the public system – the number of taxes, duties and contributions that an economic entity has to pay for the right to conduct business on the territory of a state, and the amount of time assigned for the payment of the duties for a year’s interval. The variable, generally called the taxation level, assumes an economic perspective over the phenomenon of corruption, which may be encouraged or, on the contrary, inhibited by the government’s fiscal strategy. The last component, called Human Development Index (HDI), assumes a social perspective over corruption, surveying the people’s behavior, which is also able to amplify or decrease the dimensions of corruption as a phenomenon. The whole scientific attempt is synthesized in the form of a corruption map, based on the estimated spread of the phenomenon for each surveyed country.