Ownership, Competition, and Corruption : Bribe Takers versus Bribe Payers
Over the past few years, many studies have looked at the macroeconomic, cultural, and institutional determinants of corruption. This study complements these cross-country studies by focusing on microeconomic factors that affect bribes paid in a sin...
| Main Authors: | , |
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| Format: | Policy Research Working Paper |
| Language: | English en_US |
| Published: |
World Bank, Washington, DC
2013
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| Subjects: | |
| Online Access: | http://documents.worldbank.org/curated/en/2002/02/1703258/ownership-competition-corruption-bribe-takers-versus-bribe-payers http://hdl.handle.net/10986/15635 |
| Summary: | Over the past few years, many studies
have looked at the macroeconomic, cultural, and
institutional determinants of corruption. This study
complements these cross-country studies by focusing on
microeconomic factors that affect bribes paid in a single
sector of the economy. Using enterprise-level data on bribes
paid to utilities in 21 transition economies in Easter
Europe and Central Asia, the authors look at how
characteristics of the firms paying bribes (such as
ownership, profitability, and size) and characteristics of
the utilities taking bribes (such as competition and utility
capacity) affect the equilibrium level of corruption in the
sector. On the side of bribe payers, enterprises that are
more profitable, enterprises that have greater overdue
payment to utilities, and de novo private firms pay higher
bribes. On the side of bribe takers, bribes paid to
utilities are higher in countries with greater constraints
on utility capacity, lower levels of competition in the
utility sector, and where utilities are state-owned. Bribes
in the utility sector are also correlated with many of the
macroeconomic and political factors that previous studies
have found to affect the overall level of corruption. |
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