Publication Type: Conference Paper/Unpublished Manuscript
Review Method: Peer Reviewed
Abstract: Political corruption imposes economic and political cost on society. The economics literature is replete with scholarly studies linking political corruption with undesirable eco-nomic outcomes, such as lower levels of economic growth. In addition, corruption con-tradicts one of the fundamental principles of democracy – public officials are to serve the people and not to engage in self-aggrandizing behavior. Political corruption alters the re-lationship between the government and its citizens. Consequentially, political corruption acts as a corrosive agent on the legitimacy of a government. Using data from Freedom House, Transparency International, Amnesty International, Polity IV, and other sources, I have developed a more systematic and global approach to the study of the phenomenon of political corruption. I empirically test political and economic explanations for political corruption in one hundred and forty countries.

Publication Type: Conference Paper/Unpublished Manuscript
Review Method: Peer Reviewed
Abstract: The paper casts the practices of
corruption as an information problem. It seeks to explain the mechanism
of distribution of public procurement contracts, and is conceived as a
comparative case study of the municipal elites in Italy and in Russia.
The underlying assumption of the argument is that in countries, where
the interaction between the municipalities and the local businesses is
not well institutionalized, public servants have some leverage to
deviate from the formal rules. The paper hypothesizes that municipal
officials make decisions whether to embark on illegal practices, based
on their perception of the likelihood that they will be punished for
the corrupt acts. They form this perception on the basis of the
information they receive from three main sources- the media, the record
of successful court litigations against corrupt officials, and informal
gatherings. The paper operationalizes each of these three factors of
the political and social environment and traces their effect on the
perception of the municipal elites. Media bias is measured through the
number of newspaper quotes regarding corruption interacted with the
specific ownership of this newspaper. Information regarding possible
punishment from the courts is measured as a percentage of successful
litigation over persecution cases. The crux of the paper examines how
informal associations can serve as major channels for conveying
information about the general tolerance for corruption. It could be
conceived as a novel extension of the studies of associations and their
ramifications on the decision making process of political
elites.

Publication Type: Conference Paper/Unpublished Manuscript
Abstract: Paper looks at the relation between corruption and non-tariff barriers.

Publication Type: Conference Paper/Unpublished Manuscript

Publication Type: Conference Paper/Unpublished Manuscript
Review Method: Peer Reviewed
Abstract: ABSTRACT. Although socio-legal scholars have established that in some countries bureaucratic corruption is more common than in others, little is known about the variation in bribery practices within the pervasively corrupt societies. Based on sixty-three interviews with Ukrainian university professors, students, and their parents, this paper documents and explores the systematic differences in the bribery habits of ordinary Ukrainians. The findings suggest that this variation is associated with the organizational contexts of corrupt transactions, rather than fixed characteristics of the participating actors, as the prevailing theories of corruption would suggest. Using the notion of organizational coupling, this paper argues that the incidence of university bribery is determined by the distribution of discretion and resources between different organizational actors within universities.