IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/ulb/ulbeco/2013-8408.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Is corruption an efficient grease?

Author

Listed:
  • Pierre-Guillaume Méon
  • Laurent Weill

Abstract

This paper tests whether corruption may be an efficient grease in the wheels of an otherwise deficient institutional framework. It analyzes the interaction between aggregate efficiency, corruption, and other dimensions of governance for a panel of 69 countries, both developed and developing. Using two measures of corruption and two other aspects of governance, we observe that corruption is less detrimental to efficiency in countries where institutions are less effective. It may even be positively associated with efficiency in countries where institutions are extremely ineffective. We thus find evidence for the “grease the wheels” hypothesis in its weak and strong forms.
(This abstract was borrowed from another version of this item.)

Suggested Citation

  • Pierre-Guillaume Méon & Laurent Weill, "undated". "Is corruption an efficient grease?," ULB Institutional Repository 2013/8408, ULB -- Universite Libre de Bruxelles.
    • Handle: RePEc:ulb:ulbeco:2013/8408
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    To our knowledge, this item is not available for download. To find whether it is available, there are three options:
    1. Check below whether another version of this item is available online.
    2. Check on the provider's web page whether it is in fact available.
    3. Perform a search for a similarly titled item that would be available.

    Other versions of this item:

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Caselli, Francesco, 2005. "Accounting for Cross-Country Income Differences," Handbook of Economic Growth, in: Philippe Aghion & Steven Durlauf (ed.), Handbook of Economic Growth, edition 1, volume 1, chapter 9, pages 679-741, Elsevier.
    2. Toke S. Aidt, 2009. "Corruption, institutions, and economic development," Oxford Review of Economic Policy, Oxford University Press and Oxford Review of Economic Policy Limited, vol. 25(2), pages 271-291, Summer.
    3. Aidt, Toke & Dutta, Jayasri & Sena, Vania, 2008. "Governance regimes, corruption and growth: Theory and evidence," Journal of Comparative Economics, Elsevier, vol. 36(2), pages 195-220, June.
    4. Kaufman, Daniel & Shang-Jin Wei, 1999. "Does"grease money"speed up the wheels of commerce?," Policy Research Working Paper Series 2254, The World Bank.
    5. Kurer, Oskar, 1993. "Clientelism, Corruption, and the Allocation of Resources," Public Choice, Springer, vol. 77(2), pages 259-273, October.
    6. Easterly, William & Levine, Ross, 2003. "Tropics, germs, and crops: how endowments influence economic development," Journal of Monetary Economics, Elsevier, vol. 50(1), pages 3-39, January.
    7. repec:zbw:bofitp:2008_020 is not listed on IDEAS
    8. Olson, Mancur, Jr & Sarna, Naveen & Swamy, Anand V, 2000. "Governance and Growth: A Simple Hypothesis Explaining Cross-Country Differences in Productivity Growth," Public Choice, Springer, vol. 102(3-4), pages 341-364, March.
    9. Axel Dreher & Friedrich Schneider, 2010. "Corruption and the shadow economy: an empirical analysis," Public Choice, Springer, vol. 144(1), pages 215-238, July.
    10. Dreher, Axel, 2006. "IMF and economic growth: The effects of programs, loans, and compliance with conditionality," World Development, Elsevier, vol. 34(5), pages 769-788, May.
    11. Johann Graf Lambsdorff, 2003. "How Corruption Affects Productivity," Kyklos, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 56(4), pages 457-474, November.
    12. Barro, Robert J & Lee, Jong-Wha, 2001. "International Data on Educational Attainment: Updates and Implications," Oxford Economic Papers, Oxford University Press, vol. 53(3), pages 541-563, July.
    13. Méon, Pierre-Guillaume & Weill, Laurent, 2010. "Is Corruption an Efficient Grease?," World Development, Elsevier, vol. 38(3), pages 244-259, March.
    14. Pierre-Guillaume Méon & Khalid Sekkat, 2005. "Does corruption grease or sand the wheels of growth?," Public Choice, Springer, vol. 122(1), pages 69-97, January.
    15. Edwards, Sebastian, 1998. "Openness, Productivity and Growth: What Do We Really Know?," Economic Journal, Royal Economic Society, vol. 108(447), pages 383-398, March.
    16. Caselli, Francesco, 2005. "Accounting for cross-country income differences," LSE Research Online Documents on Economics 5266, London School of Economics and Political Science, LSE Library.
    17. Daron Acemoglu & Simon Johnson & James A. Robinson, 2001. "The Colonial Origins of Comparative Development: An Empirical Investigation," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 91(5), pages 1369-1401, December.
    18. Jeffrey D. Sachs, 2001. "Tropical Underdevelopment," NBER Working Papers 8119, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    19. Jeffrey D. Sachs & Andrew Warner, 1995. "Economic Reform and the Process of Global Integration," Brookings Papers on Economic Activity, Economic Studies Program, The Brookings Institution, vol. 26(1, 25th A), pages 1-118.
    20. Axel Dreher & Lars-H. Siemers, 2009. "The nexus between corruption and capital account restrictions," Public Choice, Springer, vol. 140(1), pages 245-265, July.
    21. Dreher, Axel & Kotsogiannis, Christos & McCorriston, Steve, 2007. "Corruption around the world: Evidence from a structural model," Journal of Comparative Economics, Elsevier, vol. 35(3), pages 443-466, September.
    22. Nehru, Vikram & Dhareshwar, Ashok & DEC, 1994. "New estimates of total factor productivity growth for developing and industrial countries," Policy Research Working Paper Series 1313, The World Bank.
    23. Shang-Jin Wei, 2000. "Local Corruption and Global Capital Flows," Brookings Papers on Economic Activity, Economic Studies Program, The Brookings Institution, vol. 31(2), pages 303-354.
    24. Mo, Pak Hung, 2001. "Corruption and Economic Growth," Journal of Comparative Economics, Elsevier, vol. 29(1), pages 66-79, March.
    25. Rock, Michael T. & Bonnett, Heidi, 2004. "The Comparative Politics of Corruption: Accounting for the East Asian Paradox in Empirical Studies of Corruption, Growth and Investment," World Development, Elsevier, vol. 32(6), pages 999-1017, June.
    26. Robert E. Hall & Charles I. Jones, 1999. "Why do Some Countries Produce So Much More Output Per Worker than Others?," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 114(1), pages 83-116.
    27. Lee C. Adkins & Ronald L. Moomaw & Andreas Savvides, 2002. "Institutions, Freedom, and Technical Efficiency," Southern Economic Journal, John Wiley & Sons, vol. 69(1), pages 92-108, July.
    28. Kaufmann, Daniel & Kraay, Aart & Zoido-Lobaton, Pablo, 1999. "Aggregating governance indicators," Policy Research Working Paper Series 2195, The World Bank.
    29. Mauro, Paolo, 1998. "Corruption and the composition of government expenditure," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 69(2), pages 263-279, June.
    30. Friedman, Eric & Johnson, Simon & Kaufmann, Daniel & Zoido-Lobaton, Pablo, 2000. "Dodging the grabbing hand: the determinants of unofficial activity in 69 countries," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 76(3), pages 459-493, June.
    31. Nye, J. S., 1967. "Corruption and Political Development: A Cost-Benefit Analysis," American Political Science Review, Cambridge University Press, vol. 61(2), pages 417-427, June.
    32. Battese, G E & Coelli, T J, 1995. "A Model for Technical Inefficiency Effects in a Stochastic Frontier Production Function for Panel Data," Empirical Economics, Springer, vol. 20(2), pages 325-332.
    33. Isaac Ehrlich & Francis T. Lui, 1999. "Bureaucratic Corruption and Endogenous Economic Growth," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 107(S6), pages 270-293, December.
    34. Kimberly Ann Elliott, 1997. "Corruption and the Global Economy," Peterson Institute Press: All Books, Peterson Institute for International Economics, number 12, April.
    35. Mendez, Fabio & Sepulveda, Facundo, 2006. "Corruption, growth and political regimes: Cross country evidence," European Journal of Political Economy, Elsevier, vol. 22(1), pages 82-98, March.
    36. Kneller, Richard & Andrew Stevens, Philip, 2003. "The specification of the aggregate production function in the presence of inefficiency," Economics Letters, Elsevier, vol. 81(2), pages 223-226, November.
    37. Beck, Paul J. & Maher, Michael W., 1986. "A comparison of bribery and bidding in thin markets," Economics Letters, Elsevier, vol. 20(1), pages 1-5.
    38. Unknown, 1986. "Letters," Choices: The Magazine of Food, Farm, and Resource Issues, Agricultural and Applied Economics Association, vol. 1(4), pages 1-9.
    39. Toke S. Aidt, 2003. "Economic analysis of corruption: a survey," Economic Journal, Royal Economic Society, vol. 113(491), pages 632-652, November.
    40. Pranab Bardhan, 1997. "Corruption and Development: A Review of Issues," Journal of Economic Literature, American Economic Association, vol. 35(3), pages 1320-1346, September.
    41. W. J. Henisz, 2000. "The Institutional Environment for Economic Growth," Economics and Politics, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 12(1), pages 1-31, March.
    42. Caselli, Francesco, 2005. "Accounting for cross-country income differences," LSE Research Online Documents on Economics 3567, London School of Economics and Political Science, LSE Library.
    43. Pierre-Guillaume Méon & Laurent Weill, 2004. "Does better governance foster efficiency? An aggregate frontier analysis," Economics of Governance, Springer, vol. 6(1), pages 75-90, January.
    44. Alberto Ades & Rafael Di Tella, 1997. "The New Economics of Corruption: a Survey and Some New Results," Political Studies, Political Studies Association, vol. 45(3), pages 496-515, August.
    45. Chen, Kang, 2004. "Fiscal centralization and the form of corruption in China," European Journal of Political Economy, Elsevier, vol. 20(4), pages 1001-1009, November.
    46. Lee C. Adkins & Ronald L. Moomaw & Andreas Savvides, 2002. "Institutions, Freedom, and Technical Efficiency," Southern Economic Journal, John Wiley & Sons, vol. 69(1), pages 92-108, July.
    47. Lui, Francis T, 1985. "An Equilibrium Queuing Model of Bribery," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 93(4), pages 760-781, August.
    48. Olson, Mancur, 1993. "Dictatorship, Democracy, and Development," American Political Science Review, Cambridge University Press, vol. 87(3), pages 567-576, September.
    49. Lien, Da-Hsiang Donald, 1986. "A note on competitive bribery games," Economics Letters, Elsevier, vol. 22(4), pages 337-341.
    50. Paolo Mauro, 1995. "Corruption and Growth," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 110(3), pages 681-712.
    51. Aigner, Dennis & Lovell, C. A. Knox & Schmidt, Peter, 1977. "Formulation and estimation of stochastic frontier production function models," Journal of Econometrics, Elsevier, vol. 6(1), pages 21-37, July.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    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. Méon, Pierre-Guillaume & Weill, Laurent, 2010. "Is Corruption an Efficient Grease?," World Development, Elsevier, vol. 38(3), pages 244-259, March.
    2. repec:zbw:bofitp:2008_020 is not listed on IDEAS
    3. Cooray, Arusha & Dzhumashev, Ratbek & Schneider, Friedrich, 2017. "How Does Corruption Affect Public Debt? An Empirical Analysis," World Development, Elsevier, vol. 90(C), pages 115-127.
    4. Andrew Hodge & Sriram Shankar & D. S. Prasada Rao & Alan Duhs, 2011. "Exploring the Links Between Corruption and Growth," Review of Development Economics, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 15(3), pages 474-490, August.
    5. Ma Salinas-Jiménez & Javier Salinas-Jiménez, 2011. "Corruption and total factor productivity: level or growth effects?," Portuguese Economic Journal, Springer;Instituto Superior de Economia e Gestao, vol. 10(2), pages 109-128, August.
    6. Uberti, Luca J., 2022. "Corruption and growth: Historical evidence, 1790–2010," Journal of Comparative Economics, Elsevier, vol. 50(2), pages 321-349.
    7. Maurizio Lisciandra & Emanuele Millemaci, 2017. "The economic effect of corruption in Italy: a regional panel analysis," Regional Studies, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 51(9), pages 1387-1398, September.
    8. Gonzalo F. Forgues-Puccio & Ibrahim M. Okumu, 2012. "Does Size Matter? Scale, Corruption and Uncertainty," CDMA Working Paper Series 201207, Centre for Dynamic Macroeconomic Analysis.
    9. Axel Dreher & Thomas Herzfeld, 2005. "The Economic Costs of Corruption: A Survey and New Evidence," Public Economics 0506001, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    10. Axel Dreher & Pierre-Guillaume Méon & Friedrich Schneider, 2014. "The devil is in the shadow: Do institutions affect income and productivity or only official income and official productivity?," Post-Print CEB, ULB -- Universite Libre de Bruxelles, vol. 158(1-2), pages 121-141, January.
    11. Kouramoudou Keita & Hannu Laurila, 2016. "Efficient Corruption? Testing the hypothesis in African countries," Working Papers 1699, Tampere University, Faculty of Management and Business, Economics.
    12. Koffi Délali Kpognon & Henri Atangana Ondoa & Mamadou Bah & Peter Asare-Nuamah, 2022. "Fostering Labour Productivity Growth for Productive and Decent Job Creation in Sub-Saharan African Countries: the Role of Institutional Quality," Journal of the Knowledge Economy, Springer;Portland International Center for Management of Engineering and Technology (PICMET), vol. 13(3), pages 1962-1992, September.
    13. Maria Kravtsova & Aleksey Oshchepkov, 2019. "Market And Network Corruption," HSE Working papers WP BRP 209/EC/2019, National Research University Higher School of Economics.
    14. repec:pdn:wpaper:79 is not listed on IDEAS
    15. Ruba A. Aljarallah & Andrew Angus, 2020. "Dilemma of Natural Resource Abundance: A Case Study of Kuwait," SAGE Open, , vol. 10(1), pages 21582440198, January.
    16. Weiss, Eli & Rosenblatt, David, 2010. "Regional economic growth in Mexico : recent evolution and the role of governance," Policy Research Working Paper Series 5369, The World Bank.
    17. repec:pdn:wpaper:70 is not listed on IDEAS
    18. Pierre-Guillaume Méon & Khalid Sekkat, 2005. "Does corruption grease or sand the wheels of growth?," Public Choice, Springer, vol. 122(1), pages 69-97, January.
    19. Maria Del Mar Salinas-Jimenez & Javier Salinas-Jimenez, 2006. "Corruption and Productivity Growth in OECD Countries," ERSA conference papers ersa06p99, European Regional Science Association.
    20. Salinas-Jimenez, M del Mar & Salinas-Jimenez, Javier, 2007. "Corruption, efficiency and productivity in OECD countries," Journal of Policy Modeling, Elsevier, vol. 29(6), pages 903-915.
    21. Cooray, Arusha & Dzhumashev, Ratbek, 2018. "The effect of corruption on labour market outcomes," Economic Modelling, Elsevier, vol. 74(C), pages 207-218.

    More about this item

    JEL classification:

    • C33 - Mathematical and Quantitative Methods - - Multiple or Simultaneous Equation Models; Multiple Variables - - - Models with Panel Data; Spatio-temporal Models
    • K4 - Law and Economics - - Legal Procedure, the Legal System, and Illegal Behavior
    • O43 - Economic Development, Innovation, Technological Change, and Growth - - Economic Growth and Aggregate Productivity - - - Institutions and Growth
    • O47 - Economic Development, Innovation, Technological Change, and Growth - - Economic Growth and Aggregate Productivity - - - Empirical Studies of Economic Growth; Aggregate Productivity; Cross-Country Output Convergence

    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:ulb:ulbeco:2013/8408. 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: Benoit Pauwels (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/ecsulbe.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.