IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/taf/rsocec/v78y2020i4p507-531.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

When bribery helps the poor

Author

Listed:
  • Philip Nel

Abstract

The debate about the effect of corruption on income distribution suffers from a number of problems. The main issues are the use of perception-based measures of corruption, which implicitly favours one side of the debate, and a too narrow conception of agency involved in corruption. By relying on direct and grained evidence of bribery in 106 industrialised and industrialising states, and by appreciating the role of agency on the part of bribers, this article finds support for an emerging view that the effect of corruption on inequality is conditional. Under poor institutional conditions, entrepreneurial-related bribery is associated with an increase in the relative income share of the poorest 40%, mitigating disposable income inequality. The results are robust to the use of different income-distribution measures and data sources, as well as different specifications. While wide-spread bribery and corruption in general may be detrimental to longer term socio-economic progress, it is important not to ignore the incentives and constraints that lead people to use bribery as a means of survival.

Suggested Citation

  • Philip Nel, 2020. "When bribery helps the poor," Review of Social Economy, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 78(4), pages 507-531, October.
    • Handle: RePEc:taf:rsocec:v:78:y:2020:i:4:p:507-531
    DOI: 10.1080/00346764.2019.1618482
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/00346764.2019.1618482
    Download Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1080/00346764.2019.1618482?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to search for a different version of it.

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Danish, Muhammad Hassan & Nawaz, Shahzada Muhammad Naeem, 2022. "Does institutional trust and governance matter for multidimensional well-being? Insights from Pakistan," World Development Perspectives, Elsevier, vol. 25(C).

    More about this item

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:taf:rsocec:v:78:y:2020:i:4:p:507-531. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Chris Longhurst (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.tandfonline.com/RRSE20 .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.