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Legal Standards, Enforcement and Corruption

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Abstract

Stricter laws require more incisive and costlier enforcement. Since enforcement activity depends both on available tax revenue and the honesty of officials, the optimal legal standard of a benevolent government is increasing in per-capita income and decreasing in officials’ corruption. In contrast to the “tollbooth view” of regulation, the standard chosen by a self-interested government is a non-monotonic function of officials’ corruption, and can be either lower or higher than that chosen by a benevolent regulator. International evidence on environmental regulation show that standards correlate positively with percapita income, and negatively with corruption, consistently with the model’s predictions for benevolent governments.

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Bibliographic Info

Paper provided by Centre for Studies in Economics and Finance (CSEF), University of Naples, Italy in its series CSEF Working Papers with number 98.

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Date of creation: 01 Jun 2003
Date of revision: 01 Oct 2009
Publication status: forthcoming in the Journal of the European Economic Association, Vol. 8, No. 5, September 2010.
Handle: RePEc:sef:csefwp:98

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Keywords: legal standards; enforcement; corruption;

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Cited by:
  1. Facchini, Giovanni & Testa, Cecilia, 2011. "The rhetoric of closed borders: quotas, lax enforcement and illegal migration," CEPR Discussion Papers 8245, C.E.P.R. Discussion Papers.
  2. Immordino, Giovanni & Pagano, Marco & Polo, Michele, 2009. "Incentives to Innovate and Social Harm: Laissez-Faire, Authorization or Penalties?," CEPR Discussion Papers 7280, C.E.P.R. Discussion Papers.
  3. Giovanni Immordino & Marco Pagano & Michele Polo, 2006. "Norm Flexibility and Private Initiative," Working Papers 314, IGIER (Innocenzo Gasparini Institute for Economic Research), Bocconi University.
  4. Berglof, Erik & Claessens, Stijn, 2004. "Enforcement and Corporate Governance," Policy Research Working Paper Series 3409, The World Bank.
  5. Tong, Hui & Wei, Shang-Jin, 2012. "Does Trade Globalization Induce or Inhibit Corporate Transparency? Unbundling the Growth Potential and Product Market Competition Channels," CEPR Discussion Papers 8836, C.E.P.R. Discussion Papers.
  6. Stephen P Millard & Matthew Willison, 2004. "The welfare benefits of stable and efficient payment systems," Money Macro and Finance (MMF) Research Group Conference 2004 36, Money Macro and Finance Research Group.
  7. Harilaos Mertzanis, 2011. "The effectiveness of corporate governance policy in Greece," Journal of Financial Regulation and Compliance, Emerald Group Publishing, vol. 19(3), pages 222-243, July.
  8. Marco Pagano & Giovanni Immordino, 2007. "Optimal Regulation of Auditing," CESifo Economic Studies, CESifo, vol. 53(3), pages 363-388, September.
  9. Grajzl, Peter & Baniak, Andrzej, 2009. "Industry self-regulation, subversion of public institutions, and social control of torts," International Review of Law and Economics, Elsevier, vol. 29(4), pages 360-374, December.

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