IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/wdi/papers/2004-727.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Explaining Patterns of Corruption in the Russian Regions

Author

Listed:
  • Phyllis Dininio
  • Robert W. Orttung

Abstract

Corruption is one of the key problems facing the Russian state as it seeks to evolve out of its socialist past. Naturally, regional patterns of corruption exist across a country as large and diverse as the Russian Federation. To explain these variations, we analyze 2002 data from Transparency International and the Information for Democracy Foundation that provides the first effort to measure differences in incidence of corruption across 40 Russian regions. We find that corruption in Russia primarily is a structural problem, and not one related to its institutions. Within each region, the amount of corruption increases as the size of the regional economy grows, the per capita income decreases, and the population decreases. Russian policymakers can therefore work to reduce corruption by encouraging economic development outside of the key centers of Moscow and St. Petersburg. Because the data show that voter turnout also lowers corruption, policymakers can also fight corruption by fostering more political accountability in elections.

Suggested Citation

  • Phyllis Dininio & Robert W. Orttung, 2004. "Explaining Patterns of Corruption in the Russian Regions," William Davidson Institute Working Papers Series 727, William Davidson Institute at the University of Michigan.
    • Handle: RePEc:wdi:papers:2004-727
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/40113/3/wp727.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Andrei Shleifer & Daniel Treisman, 2003. "A Normal Country," NBER Working Papers 10057, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    2. Treisman, Daniel, 2000. "The causes of corruption: a cross-national study," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 76(3), pages 399-457, June.
    3. Zhuravskaya, Ekaterina & Slinko, Irina & Yakovlev, Evgeny, 2003. "Institutional Subversion: Evidence from Russian Regions," CEPR Discussion Papers 4024, C.E.P.R. Discussion Papers.
    4. Harry G. Broadman, 2002. "Unleashing Russia's Business Potential : Lessons from the Regions for Building Market Institutions," World Bank Publications - Books, The World Bank Group, number 14096.
    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. Tullio Buccellato & Tomasz Mickiewicz, 2009. "Oil and Gas: A Blessing for the Few. Hydrocarbons and Inequality within Regions in Russia," Europe-Asia Studies, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 61(3), pages 385-407.
    2. Kolomak Evgeniya, 2007. "Sub-federal administrative regulation of entry in Russia," EERC Working Paper Series 07-03e, EERC Research Network, Russia and CIS.
    3. Thomas Herzfeld, 2008. "Inter-regional output distribution: a comparison of Russian and Chinese experience," Post-Communist Economies, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 20(4), pages 431-447.
    4. William Tompson, 2007. "From "Clientelism" to a "Client-Centred Orientation"? The Challenge of Public Administration Reform in Russia," OECD Economics Department Working Papers 536, OECD Publishing.
    5. Asel Isakova & Alexander Plekhanov, 2011. "Region-specific Constraints to Doing Business: Evidence from Russia," Aussenwirtschaft, University of St. Gallen, School of Economics and Political Science, Swiss Institute for International Economics and Applied Economics Research, vol. 66(2), pages 181-210, June.

    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. Anwar Shah, 2006. "Corruption and Decentralized Public Governance," Chapters, in: Ehtisham Ahmad & Giorgio Brosio (ed.), Handbook of Fiscal Federalism, chapter 19, Edward Elgar Publishing.
    2. Irina N. Ilina & Carol S. Leonard & Evgenij E. Plisetskij, 2014. "Russian Regional Resilience: Finance, Cooperation And Resource Abundance (A Case Study Of Khanty-Mansiysk)," HSE Working papers WP BRP 15/PA/2014, National Research University Higher School of Economics.
    3. Weill, Laurent, 2011. "How corruption affects bank lending in Russia," Economic Systems, Elsevier, vol. 35(2), pages 230-243, June.
    4. Florin Alexandru Roman & Monica Violeta Achim & Robert W. McGee, 2023. "Fraud related to EU funds. The case of Romania," Journal of Financial Studies, Institute of Financial Studies, vol. 14(8), pages 120-142, May.
    5. Hunt, Jennifer & Laszlo, Sonia, 2005. "Bribery: Who Pays, Who Refuses, What are the Payoffs?," CEPR Discussion Papers 5251, C.E.P.R. Discussion Papers.
    6. Alberto Alesina & Ekaterina Zhuravskaya, 2011. "Segregation and the Quality of Government in a Cross Section of Countries," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 101(5), pages 1872-1911, August.
    7. Irvin Mikhail Soto & Willy Walter Cortéz, 2015. "La corrupción en la burocracia estatal mexicana," Revista de Economía Institucional, Universidad Externado de Colombia - Facultad de Economía, vol. 17(33), pages 161-182, July-Dece.
    8. Gani, Azmat & Scrimgeour, Frank, 2014. "Modeling governance and water pollution using the institutional ecological economic framework," Economic Modelling, Elsevier, vol. 42(C), pages 363-372.
    9. Désirée Teobaldelli, 2011. "Federalism and the shadow economy," Public Choice, Springer, vol. 146(3), pages 269-289, March.
    10. Iwasaki, Ichiro & 岩﨑, 一郎 & イワサキ, イチロウ & Dolgopyatova, Tatiana & Yakovlev, Andrei & Bruno, Dallago, 2004. "Corporate Governance in Transition Economies. Part 1: The Case of Russia," Discussion Paper Series b29, Institute of Economic Research, Hitotsubashi University.
    11. repec:dau:papers:123456789/5135 is not listed on IDEAS
    12. Kyunga Na & Young-Hee Kang & Yang Sok Kim, 2018. "The Effect of Corporate Governance on the Corruption of Firms in BRICs (Brazil, Russia, India & China)," Social Sciences, MDPI, vol. 7(6), pages 1-16, May.
    13. Joan Rosselló Villalonga, 2018. "Fiscal centralization: a remedy for corruption?," SERIEs: Journal of the Spanish Economic Association, Springer;Spanish Economic Association, vol. 9(4), pages 457-474, November.
    14. Gueorguiev, Dimitar & Malesky, Edmund, 2012. "Foreign investment and bribery: A firm-level analysis of corruption in Vietnam," Journal of Asian Economics, Elsevier, vol. 23(2), pages 111-129.
    15. Bin Dong & Benno Torgler, 2010. "The Causes of Corruption: Evidence from China," Working Papers 2010.72, Fondazione Eni Enrico Mattei.
    16. Mohammad Reza Farzanegan, 2020. "Cognitive ability and corruption: rule of law (still) matters," Empirical Economics, Springer, vol. 59(4), pages 1723-1743, October.
    17. 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).
    18. Calvo, Esteban & Williamson, John B., 2006. "Old-Age Pension Reform and Modernization Pathways: Lessons for China from Latin America," MPRA Paper 4872, University Library of Munich, Germany, revised 2007.
    19. Magnusson, Leandro M. & Tarverdi, Yashar, 2020. "Measuring governance: Why do errors matter?," World Development, Elsevier, vol. 136(C).
    20. Ishita Chatterjee & Ranjan Ray, 2009. "Crime, Corruption and Institutions," Monash Economics Working Papers 20-09, Monash University, Department of Economics.
    21. Harouna Sedgo & Luc Désiré Omgba, 2023. "Corruption and distortion of public expenditures: evidence from Africa," International Tax and Public Finance, Springer;International Institute of Public Finance, vol. 30(2), pages 419-452, April.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    Corruption; Russia;

    JEL classification:

    • D73 - Microeconomics - - Analysis of Collective Decision-Making - - - Bureaucracy; Administrative Processes in Public Organizations; Corruption

    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:wdi:papers:2004-727. 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: WDI (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/wdumius.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.