Corruption Across Government Occupations: Cross-National Survey Evidence

Abstract

This paper uses survey data on cross-national corruption to examine determinants of corruption.The key contribution is in examining differences in corruption across various government occupations: (i) (general) government officials; (ii) customs officers; and (iii) police officers. We find significant differences in corruption across these occupations and factors driving overall corrupt activity, including personal attributes of bribe givers, macroeconomic and institutional factors, and these factors do not necessarily exert similar influences across all government occupations. In particular, police corruption seems qualitatively different from corruption in other occupations.

The Integrity of Local Enforcement Officers: Self Proclaim vs Colleague Perception

“…This shows that demographic factor also have certain degree of influence to integrity exercises. Goel, Mazhar, and Nelson (2014) find that unmarried individuals are less likely to commit corruption. Single individuals normally live a less stressed life as compared to married individuals due to different level of family commitment.…”

Is it the gums, teeth or the bite? Effectiveness of dimensions of enforcement in curbing corruption

“…Curiously the coefficient on POLICE is positive and statistically significant, which might be due to a reaction to an increase in corruption or these agents of the government being corrupt themselves (Goel and Nelson (2011)), Goel et al (2016)), we deal with this simultaneity in Section 4.2. Thus, merely showing enforcement "teeth" appears to be ineffective at curbing corruption, and in some cases may encourage corruption as enforcement employment might themselves be corrupt (Goel et al (2016)).…”

General Theory of Economics: <i>CDR</i> Supply Side Scientific Growth Law Unveiled

“…The direction of causation is obviously from D to G. Furthermore, D and R reflect economic freedom, and Gwartney, Holcombe and Lawson [30] [31] used Granger [32] testing to show the direction of causation to be from economic freedom of the world (EFW) to GDP. R is the exogenous catalyst of governance that recognizes property rights and discourages corruption (Goel, Mazhar and Nelson [33], Czap and Nur-tegin [34]). In this study the reverse of corruption was chosen to represent R. It is a ranking of countries (the Transparency International graphic in Figure A1.…”