IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/chm/wpaper/wp2006-1.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Is it wrong to rank? A critical assessment of corruption indices

Author

Listed:
  • Tina Søreide

Abstract

This paper emphasizes the importance of collecting information on corruption, while still stressing critical aspects of the most applied sources of such information, the cross-country composite corruption indices. Are these indices damaging and misleading or are they informative and useful? The paper points to the implication of the lack of a clear distinction between legal and illegal payments or ways of gaining influence. It summarizes the main limitations of Transparency International's Corruption Perceptions Index (CPI), underscores the problem of expecting perceptions to be reliable, and discusses the problem of incorrect understanding and usage of the index. Publicity does not necessarily mean progress, and the construction of the CPI should be influenced by the way this index is applied by the public. A final question is whether it is possible to increase the CPI's value by creating incentives for states to improve their achievements under, for instance, the OECD anti-bribery convention.

Suggested Citation

  • Tina Søreide, 2006. "Is it wrong to rank? A critical assessment of corruption indices," CMI Working Papers WP 2006: 1, CMI (Chr. Michelsen Institute), Bergen, Norway.
    • Handle: RePEc:chm:wpaper:wp2006-1
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://www.cmi.no/publications/file/2120-is-it-wrong-to-rank.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Jakob Svensson, 2003. "Who Must Pay Bribes and How Much? Evidence from a Cross Section of Firms," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 118(1), pages 207-230.
    2. Odd-Helge Fjeldstad, 2006. "Corruption in Tax Administration: Lessons from Institutional Reforms in Uganda," Chapters, in: Susan Rose-Ackerman (ed.), International Handbook on the Economics of Corruption, chapter 17, Edward Elgar Publishing.
    3. Reinikka, Ritva & Svensson, Jakob, 2003. "Survey techniques to measure and explain corruption," Policy Research Working Paper Series 3071, The World Bank.
    4. Bjorvatn, Kjetil & Torsvik, Gaute & Tungodden, Bertil, 2004. "How middle-men can undermine anti-corruption reforms," Working Papers in Economics 12/04, University of Bergen, Department of Economics.
    5. Astri Suhrke & Espen Villanger & Susan L. Woodward, 2005. "Economic Aid to Post-conflict Countries: A Methodological Critique of Collier and Hoeffler," CMI Working Papers WP 2005:4, CMI (Chr. Michelsen Institute), Bergen, Norway.
    6. Arne Wiig, 2005. "Corporate Social Responsibility in the Angolan Oil Industry," CMI Working Papers WP 2005: 8, CMI (Chr. Michelsen Institute), Bergen, Norway.
    7. Alberto Alesina & Beatrice Weder, 2002. "Do Corrupt Governments Receive Less Foreign Aid?," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 92(4), pages 1126-1137, September.
    8. Svensson, Jakob, 2000. "Foreign aid and rent-seeking," Journal of International Economics, Elsevier, vol. 51(2), pages 437-461, August.
    9. Glaeser, Edward & Scheinkman, Jose & Shleifer, Andrei, 2003. "The injustice of inequality," Journal of Monetary Economics, Elsevier, vol. 50(1), pages 199-222, January.
    10. Espen Villanger & Anette Walstad Enes, 2004. "The role of participation and empowerment in income and poverty dynamics in Indonesia 1993-2000," CMI Working Papers WP 2004: 13, CMI (Chr. Michelsen Institute), Bergen, Norway.
    11. Kaufmann, Daniel & Kraay, Aart & Zoido-Lobaton, Pablo, 1999. "Aggregating governance indicators," Policy Research Working Paper Series 2195, The World Bank.
    12. Vaidya, Samarth, 2005. "Corruption in the media's gaze," European Journal of Political Economy, Elsevier, vol. 21(3), pages 667-687, September.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

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


    Cited by:

    1. Høyland, Bjørn & Moene, Karl & Willumsen, Fredrik, 2012. "The tyranny of international index rankings," Journal of Development Economics, Elsevier, vol. 97(1), pages 1-14.
    2. Benno Torgler & Marco Piatti, 2013. "Extraordinary Wealth, Globalization, And Corruption," Review of Income and Wealth, International Association for Research in Income and Wealth, vol. 59(2), pages 341-359, June.
    3. Weber Abramo, Claudio, 2008. "How Much Do Perceptions of Corruption Really Tell Us?," Economics - The Open-Access, Open-Assessment E-Journal (2007-2020), Kiel Institute for the World Economy (IfW Kiel), vol. 2, pages 1-56.
    4. Németh, Erzsébet & Vargha, Bálint Tamás & Pályi, Katalin Ágnes, 2019. "The Scientific Reliability of International Corruption Rankings," Public Finance Quarterly, Corvinus University of Budapest, vol. 64(3), pages 319-336.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Odd-Helge Fjeldstad & Ivar Kolstad & Knut Nygaard, 2006. "Bribes, taxes and regulations: Business constraints for micro enterprises in Tanzania," CMI Working Papers WP 2006: 2, CMI (Chr. Michelsen Institute), Bergen, Norway.
    2. Odd-Helge Fjeldstad, 2006. "Corruption in Tax Administration: Lessons from Institutional Reforms in Uganda," Chapters, in: Susan Rose-Ackerman (ed.), International Handbook on the Economics of Corruption, chapter 17, Edward Elgar Publishing.
    3. Thomas Barnebeck Andersen & Henrik Hansen & Thomas Markussen, 2006. "US politics and World Bank IDA-lending," Journal of Development Studies, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 42(5), pages 772-794.
    4. Stojanovikj, Martin, 2022. "Can inflation targeting reduce price information asymmetry and alleviate corruptive behavior? Evidence from developing countries," Economic Systems, Elsevier, vol. 46(3).
    5. Balázs Szent-Iványi, 2015. "Are Democratising Countries Rewarded with Higher Levels of Foreign Aid?," Acta Oeconomica, Akadémiai Kiadó, Hungary, vol. 65(4), pages 593-615, December.
    6. Thierry Kangoye, 2008. "Instability from trade and democracy: the long-run effect of aid," Post-Print hal-00331902, HAL.
    7. Sèna Kimm Gnangnon, 2020. "Trade Openness and Diversification of External Financial Flows for Development: An Empirical Analysis," South Asian Journal of Macroeconomics and Public Finance, , vol. 9(1), pages 22-57, June.
    8. Kilby, Christopher, 2005. "World Bank lending and regulation," Economic Systems, Elsevier, vol. 29(4), pages 384-407, December.
    9. Clara Delavallade, 2007. "Why do North African firms involve in corruption?," Université Paris1 Panthéon-Sorbonne (Post-Print and Working Papers) halshs-00143412, HAL.
    10. Alberto Alesina & Beatrice Weder, 2002. "Do Corrupt Governments Receive Less Foreign Aid?," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 92(4), pages 1126-1137, September.
    11. Mina Baliamoune-Lutz, 2007. "Institutions, Trade, and Social Cohesion in Fragile States," ICER Working Papers 24-2007, ICER - International Centre for Economic Research.
    12. Foellmi, Reto & Oechslin, Manuel, 2007. "Who gains from non-collusive corruption?," Journal of Development Economics, Elsevier, vol. 82(1), pages 95-119, January.
    13. Saki Bigio & Nelson R. Ramírez Rondán, 2020. "Corrupción e indicadores de desarrollo en el Perú y el mundo: una revisión empírica," Capítulos de libros, in: Nikita Céspedes Reynaga & Norman V. Loayza & Nelson R. Ramírez Rondán (ed.), Crecimiento económico en el Perú: causas y consecuencias, edition 1, volume 1, chapter 4, pages 118-151, Universidad de San Martín de Porres.
    14. Björn Frank, 2004. "Zehn Jahre empirische Korruptionsforschung," Vierteljahrshefte zur Wirtschaftsforschung / Quarterly Journal of Economic Research, DIW Berlin, German Institute for Economic Research, vol. 73(2), pages 184-199.
    15. Uchenna R. Efobi & Simplice A. Asongu & Ibukun Beecroft, 2015. "Foreign Direct Investment, Aid and Terrorism: Empirical Insight Conditioned on Corruption Control," Research Africa Network Working Papers 15/007, Research Africa Network (RAN).
    16. Öhler, Hannes & Nunnenkamp, Peter & Dreher, Axel, 2012. "Does conditionality work? A test for an innovative US aid scheme," European Economic Review, Elsevier, vol. 56(1), pages 138-153.
    17. Keith Blackburn & Gonzalo F. Forgues-Puccio, 2011. "Foreign aid - a fillip for development or a fuel for corruption?," Centre for Growth and Business Cycle Research Discussion Paper Series 158, Economics, The University of Manchester.
    18. Kangoye, Thierry, 2011. "Does Foreign Aid Promote Democracy?," WIDER Working Paper Series 064, World Institute for Development Economic Research (UNU-WIDER).
    19. Asongu, Simplice A., 2013. "On the effectiveness of foreign aid in institutional quality," European Economic Letters, European Economics Letters Group, vol. 2(1), pages 12-19.
    20. Joseph Forson, 2015. "Corruption, EU Aid Inflows and Economic Growth in Ghana: Cointegration and Causality Analysis," Managing Intellectual Capital and Innovation for Sustainable and Inclusive Society: Managing Intellectual Capital and Innovation; Proceedings of the MakeLearn and TIIM Joint International Conference 2,, ToKnowPress.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    Corruption Index Data;

    NEP fields

    This paper has been announced in the following NEP Reports:

    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:chm:wpaper:wp2006-1. 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.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with 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: Robert Sjursen (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/cmiiino.html .

    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.