Measuring Governance, Corruption, and State Capture : How Firms and Bureaucrats Shape the Business Environment in Transition Economies

Hellman, Joel S. ; Jones, Geraint ; Kaufmann, Daniel ; Schankerman, Mark

World Bank, Washington, DC

关键词: AMERICAN DEVELOPMENT BANK;    ANTI-COMPETITIVE PRACTICES;    BRIBERY;    BRIBES;    BUREAUCRACY;   

DOI  :  10.1596/1813-9450-2312
RP-ID  :  WPS2312

学科分类：社会科学、人文和艺术（综合）

来源: World Bank Open Knowledge Repository

【 摘 要 】

As a symptom of fundamentalinstitutional weaknesses, corruption needs to be viewedwithin a broader governance framework. It thrives where thestate is unable to reign over its bureaucracy, to protectproperty and contractual rights, or to provide institutionsthat support the rule off law. Furthermore, governancefailures at the national level cannot be isolated from theinterface between the corporate and state sectors, inparticular from the heretofore under-emphasized influencethat firms may exert on the state. Under certain conditions,corporate strategies may exacerbate mis-governance at thenational level. An in-depth empirical assessment of thelinks between corporate behavior and national governance canthus provide particular insights. The 1999 BusinessEnvironment and Enterprise Performance Survey (BEEPS) - thetransition economies component of the ongoing World BusinessEnvironment Survey - assesses in detail the variousdimensions of governance from the perspective of about 3,000firms in 20 countries. After introducing the surveyframework and measurement approach, the authors present thesurvey results, focusing on governance, corruption, andstate capture. By unbundling governance into its manydimensions, BEEPS permits an in-depth empirical assessment.The authors pay special attention to certain forms of grandcorruption, notably state capture by parts of the corporatesector - that is, the propensity of firms to shape theunderlying rules of the game by "purchasing"decrees, legislation, and influence at the central bank,which is found to be prevalent in a number of transitioneconomies. The survey also measures other dimensions ofgrand corruption, including those associated with publicprocurement, and quantifies the more traditional("prettier") forms of corruption. Cross-countrysurveys may suffer from bias if firms tend to systematicallyover- or underestimate the extent of problems within theircountry. The authors provide a new test of this potentialbias, finding little evidence of country perception bias in BEEPS.