IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/stl/stledp/2008-09.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Corruption Epidemics

Author

Listed:
  • Becker, Sascha
  • Egger, Peter H
  • Seidel, Tobias

Abstract

When estimating the determinants of perceived corruption, economists assumed that there is full independence across countries. In the presence of peer-group or learning effects through cross-border economic activity (such as trade or labor migration), this assumption might be violated. We provide evidence that this is the case. Using a cross-section of 123 economies for the year 2000, we illustrate that corruption in one country spills over to adjacent economies. This finding implies that institutional changes reducing corruption in one country lead to smaller but qualitatively similar effects in neighboring countries.

Suggested Citation

  • Becker, Sascha & Egger, Peter H & Seidel, Tobias, 2008. "Corruption Epidemics," Stirling Economics Discussion Papers 2008-09, University of Stirling, Division of Economics.
    • Handle: RePEc:stl:stledp:2008-09
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://hdl.handle.net/1893/508
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Kelejian, Harry H & Prucha, Ingmar R, 1999. "A Generalized Moments Estimator for the Autoregressive Parameter in a Spatial Model," International Economic Review, Department of Economics, University of Pennsylvania and Osaka University Institute of Social and Economic Research Association, vol. 40(2), pages 509-533, May.
    2. Gundlach, Erich & Paldam, Martin, 2009. "The transition of corruption: From poverty to honesty," Economics Letters, Elsevier, vol. 103(3), pages 146-148, June.
    3. Maria Cracolici & Teodora Uberti, 2009. "Geographical distribution of crime in Italian provinces: a spatial econometric analysis," Review of Regional Research: Jahrbuch für Regionalwissenschaft, Springer;Gesellschaft für Regionalforschung (GfR), vol. 29(1), pages 1-28, February.
    4. Naci Mocan, 2008. "What Determines Corruption? International Evidence From Microdata," Economic Inquiry, Western Economic Association International, vol. 46(4), pages 493-510, October.
    5. Herzfeld, Thomas & Weiss, Christoph, 2003. "Corruption and legal (in)effectiveness: an empirical investigation," European Journal of Political Economy, Elsevier, vol. 19(3), pages 621-632, September.
    6. La Porta, Rafael & Lopez-de-Silanes, Florencio & Shleifer, Andrei & Vishny, Robert, 1999. "The Quality of Government," The Journal of Law, Economics, and Organization, Oxford University Press, vol. 15(1), pages 222-279, April.
    7. Kelejian, Harry H. & Prucha, Ingmar R., 2007. "HAC estimation in a spatial framework," Journal of Econometrics, Elsevier, vol. 140(1), pages 131-154, September.
    8. Martin Paldam, 2001. "Corruption and Religion Adding to the Economic Model," Kyklos, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 54(2‐3), pages 383-413, May.
    9. Levine, Ross & Renelt, David, 1992. "A Sensitivity Analysis of Cross-Country Growth Regressions," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 82(4), pages 942-963, September.
    10. Treisman, Daniel, 2000. "The causes of corruption: a cross-national study," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 76(3), pages 399-457, June.
    11. Simmons, Beth A. & Elkins, Zachary, 2004. "The Globalization of Liberalization: Policy Diffusion in the International Political Economy," American Political Science Review, Cambridge University Press, vol. 98(1), pages 171-189, February.
    12. Andvig, Jens Chr. & Moene, Karl Ove, 1990. "How corruption may corrupt," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 13(1), pages 63-76, January.
    13. Feichtinger, Gustav & Wirl, Franz, 1994. "On the stability and potential cyclicity of corruption in governments subject to popularity constraints," Mathematical Social Sciences, Elsevier, vol. 28(2), pages 113-131, October.
    14. Sala-i-Martin, Xavier, 1997. "I Just Ran Two Million Regressions," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 87(2), pages 178-183, May.
    15. Herbert Dawid & Gustav Feichtinger, 1996. "On the persistence of corruption," Journal of Economics, Springer, vol. 64(2), pages 177-193, June.
    16. Meseguer, Covadonga, 2006. "Learning and economic policy choices," European Journal of Political Economy, Elsevier, vol. 22(1), pages 156-178, March.
    17. Danila Serra, 2006. "Empirical determinants of corruption: A sensitivity analysis," Public Choice, Springer, vol. 126(1), pages 225-256, January.
    18. Mauro, Paolo, 1998. "Corruption and the composition of government expenditure," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 69(2), pages 263-279, June.
    19. Paldam, Martin, 2002. "The cross-country pattern of corruption: economics, culture and the seesaw dynamics," European Journal of Political Economy, Elsevier, vol. 18(2), pages 215-240, June.
    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. Hathroubi, Salem, 2013. "Epidemic corruption: a bio-economic homology," EconStor Preprints 73558, ZBW - Leibniz Information Centre for Economics.
    2. Raffaella Barone & Donato Masciandaro & Friedrich Schneider, 2022. "Corruption and money laundering: You scratch my back, i’ll scratch yours," Metroeconomica, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 73(1), pages 318-342, February.

    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. Becker, Sascha O. & Egger, Peter H. & Seidel, Tobias, 2009. "Common political culture: Evidence on regional corruption contagion," European Journal of Political Economy, Elsevier, vol. 25(3), pages 300-310, September.
    2. Michael Jetter & Christopher F. Parmeter, 2016. "Uncovering the determinants of corruption," Working Papers 2016-02, University of Miami, Department of Economics.
    3. Bo Sui & Gen-Fu Feng & Chun-Ping Chang, 2018. "The pioneer evidence of contagious corruption," Quality & Quantity: International Journal of Methodology, Springer, vol. 52(2), pages 945-968, March.
    4. Eugen Dimant & Guglielmo Tosato, 2018. "Causes And Effects Of Corruption: What Has Past Decade'S Empirical Research Taught Us? A Survey," Journal of Economic Surveys, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 32(2), pages 335-356, April.
    5. repec:pdn:wpaper:79 is not listed on IDEAS
    6. repec:pdn:wpaper:70 is not listed on IDEAS
    7. Pieroni, L. & d'Agostino, G., 2013. "Corruption and the effects of economic freedom," European Journal of Political Economy, Elsevier, vol. 29(C), pages 54-72.
    8. Gbewopo Attila, 2009. "Individual attitudes toward anti-corruption policies in Sub-Saharan Africa: Microeconometric evidence," Economics Bulletin, AccessEcon, vol. 29(3), pages 1933-1939.
    9. Aidt, T. & Dutta, J. & Vania Sena, 2005. "Growth, Governance and Corruption in the Presence of Threshold Effects: Theory and Evidence," Cambridge Working Papers in Economics 0540, Faculty of Economics, University of Cambridge.
    10. Herzfeld, Thomas & Weiss, Christoph, 2003. "Corruption and legal (in)effectiveness: an empirical investigation," European Journal of Political Economy, Elsevier, vol. 19(3), pages 621-632, September.
    11. Blaise Gnimassoun, Joseph Keneck Massil, 2019. "Determinants of corruption: can we put all countries in the same basket?," European Journal of Comparative Economics, Cattaneo University (LIUC), vol. 16(2), pages 239-276, December.
    12. Blaise Gnimassoun & Joseph Keneck Massil, 2016. "Determinants of corruption: Can we put all countries in the same basket?," Working Papers hal-04141599, HAL.
    13. Rajeev K. Goel, 2012. "Business regulation and taxation: effects on cross-country corruption," Journal of Economic Policy Reform, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 15(3), pages 223-242, September.
    14. Michael A. Nelson, 2013. "Corruption and the size of local governments: are they related?," Chapters, in: Santiago Lago-Peñas & Jorge Martinez-Vazquez (ed.), The Challenge of Local Government Size, chapter 4, pages 83-120, Edward Elgar Publishing.
    15. Jetter, Michael & Parmeter, Christopher F., 2018. "Sorting through global corruption determinants: Institutions and education matter – Not culture," World Development, Elsevier, vol. 109(C), pages 279-294.
    16. Nicolas Jacquemet, 2005. "La corruption comme une imbrication de contrats : Une revue de la littérature microéconomique," Working Papers 2005-29, Center for Research in Economics and Statistics.
    17. Goel, Rajeev K. & Nelson, Michael A. & Naretta, Michael A., 2012. "The internet as an indicator of corruption awareness," European Journal of Political Economy, Elsevier, vol. 28(1), pages 64-75.
    18. Benito, Bernardino & Guillamón, María-Dolores & Ríos, Ana-María & Bastida, Francisco, 2018. "Can salaries and re-election prevent political corruption? An empirical evidence," Revista de Contabilidad - Spanish Accounting Review, Elsevier, vol. 21(1), pages 19-27.
    19. Vincenzo Alfano & Salvatore Capasso & Rajeev K. Goel, 2021. "EU accession: A boon or bane for corruption?," Journal of Economics and Finance, Springer;Academy of Economics and Finance, vol. 45(1), pages 1-21, January.
    20. Majeed, Muhammad Tariq & MacDonald, Ronald, 2010. "Corruption and the Military in Politics: Theory and Evidence from around the World," SIRE Discussion Papers 2010-91, Scottish Institute for Research in Economics (SIRE).
    21. repec:hhs:bofitp:2009_005 is not listed on IDEAS
    22. Goel, Rajeev K. & Mazhar, Ummad & Sayan, Serdar, 2021. "Strategic location of firms: Does it empower bribe givers or bribe takers?," Economic Systems, Elsevier, vol. 45(3).

    More about this item

    Keywords

    Perceived corruption; Institutions; Spatial econometrics;
    All these keywords.

    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:stl:stledp:2008-09. 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: Liam Delaney (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/destiuk.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.