Understanding Corruption and Firm Responses in Cross-National Firm-Level Surveys

The issue of corruption is important to politicians, citizens, and firms. Since the early 1990s, a large number of studies have sought to understand the causes and consequences of corruption employing firm-level survey data from various countries. While insightful, these analyses have largely ignore...

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Main Authors:	Jensen, Nathan M., Li, Quan, Rahman, Aminur
Format:	Journal Article
Language:	EN
Published:	2012
Subjects:	Corporate Culture Social Responsibility M140
Online Access:	http://hdl.handle.net/10986/5886

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recordtype	oai_dc
spelling	okr-10986-58862021-04-23T14:02:23Z Understanding Corruption and Firm Responses in Cross-National Firm-Level Surveys Jensen, Nathan M. Li, Quan Rahman, Aminur Corporate Culture Social Responsibility M140 The issue of corruption is important to politicians, citizens, and firms. Since the early 1990s, a large number of studies have sought to understand the causes and consequences of corruption employing firm-level survey data from various countries. While insightful, these analyses have largely ignored two important potential problems: nonresponse and potential false response by the firms. We argue that in politically repressive environments, firms use nonresponse and potential false response as self-protection mechanisms. Corruption is likely understated in such countries. We test our argument using the World Bank enterprise survey data of more than 44,000 firms in 72 countries for the period 2000-2005. We find that firms in countries with less press freedom are more likely to provide nonresponse and false response on the issue of corruption. Therefore ignoring these systematic biases in firms' responses could result in serious underestimation of the severity of corruption in politically repressive countries. More important, these biases are a rich and underutilized source of information on the political constraints faced by the firms. Firm managers can better evaluate levels of corruption, not only by truthful answers to corruption questions, but also by nonresponses and false responses to such questions. 2012-03-30T07:35:01Z 2012-03-30T07:35:01Z 2010 Journal Article Journal of International Business Studies 00472506 http://hdl.handle.net/10986/5886 EN http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0/igo World Bank Journal Article
repository_type	Digital Repository
institution_category	Foreign Institution
institution	Digital Repositories
building	World Bank Open Knowledge Repository
collection	World Bank
language	EN
topic	Corporate Culture Social Responsibility M140
spellingShingle	Corporate Culture Social Responsibility M140 Jensen, Nathan M. Li, Quan Rahman, Aminur Understanding Corruption and Firm Responses in Cross-National Firm-Level Surveys
relation	http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0/igo
description	The issue of corruption is important to politicians, citizens, and firms. Since the early 1990s, a large number of studies have sought to understand the causes and consequences of corruption employing firm-level survey data from various countries. While insightful, these analyses have largely ignored two important potential problems: nonresponse and potential false response by the firms. We argue that in politically repressive environments, firms use nonresponse and potential false response as self-protection mechanisms. Corruption is likely understated in such countries. We test our argument using the World Bank enterprise survey data of more than 44,000 firms in 72 countries for the period 2000-2005. We find that firms in countries with less press freedom are more likely to provide nonresponse and false response on the issue of corruption. Therefore ignoring these systematic biases in firms' responses could result in serious underestimation of the severity of corruption in politically repressive countries. More important, these biases are a rich and underutilized source of information on the political constraints faced by the firms. Firm managers can better evaluate levels of corruption, not only by truthful answers to corruption questions, but also by nonresponses and false responses to such questions.
format	Journal Article
author	Jensen, Nathan M. Li, Quan Rahman, Aminur
author_facet	Jensen, Nathan M. Li, Quan Rahman, Aminur
author_sort	Jensen, Nathan M.
title	Understanding Corruption and Firm Responses in Cross-National Firm-Level Surveys
title_short	Understanding Corruption and Firm Responses in Cross-National Firm-Level Surveys
title_full	Understanding Corruption and Firm Responses in Cross-National Firm-Level Surveys
title_fullStr	Understanding Corruption and Firm Responses in Cross-National Firm-Level Surveys
title_full_unstemmed	Understanding Corruption and Firm Responses in Cross-National Firm-Level Surveys
title_sort	understanding corruption and firm responses in cross-national firm-level surveys
publishDate	2012
url	http://hdl.handle.net/10986/5886
_version_	1764396659479937024

Understanding Corruption and Firm Responses in Cross-National Firm-Level Surveys

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