Skimming and Cramming

There are many study methods that are used by students while revising for examinations. Some methods are effective while others are ineffective. Effective methods are helpful since they help students to understand and retain a lot of information. Ineffective methods are not only tiresome but also lead to burn out.Advertising We will write a custom essay sample on Skimming and Cramming specifically for you for only $16.05 $11/page Learn More Therefore, it becomes increasingly hard for students using such methods to retain reliable and important information. With that background in mind, this paper shall describe cramming and skimming which are ineffective study methods. Cramming can be described as a study technique which involves trying to absorb a lot of information within a short time. It is mostly used by students who prefer to study when the examination is almost or during the last few days. Due to the pressure involved, it results in poor retention of information for a long duration of time. It then serves the purpose of the examination after which the student forgets a lot of information. In many cases, a teacher gives a long deadline before the date of the test. Due to procrastination, the deadline almost comes to end without the notice of the student. A student may remember about the test may be a day or two before the due date. As a matter of fact, one day cannot be enough to go through all the work the student may have covered. At that particular time, the student tries to go through all the work and to retain a lot of information as much as possible (Pastorino and Doyle-Portillo pp. 216). The brain can be likened to a sponge such that there is need for it to absorb the information slowly. It can also be likened to a water way where water passes through while getting into a dam. A steady flow of water usually has no problem but when a lot of water tries to get through the same entry, damages usually occur due to over floo ding and some water also gets lost. The same case happens to brain during cramming. Some information is usually lost and the habit can also be detrimental to one’s health.Advertising Looking for essay on education? Let's see if we can help you! Get your first paper with 15% OFF Learn More Skimming is yet another ineffective study method especially while preparing for an exam. It is a method which involves reading a whole passage, a paragraph or any form of writing with an aim of knowing just the main idea. Therefore, the reader using the method does not read carefully but only searches for the main idea. The reader only focuses on the topic sentence and does not read other sentences that explain or support the main idea. In most cases, skimming is used by a person who is already familiar with the information being read because if material happens to be unfamiliar, the person can miss on important details. For instance, a person skimming through this essay will p robably read the first paragraph which is supposed to contain the thesis or the main idea. By so doing, the person will be able to establish that the essay focuses on ineffective methods of study which include cramming and skimming. The next step would involve searching for paragraphs which explain the meaning of each method. In such a case, the reader won’t waste time on reading the explanation part. For that reason, the method is ineffective because there is a lot that is left out. In addition, it is done fast such that there is no time to synthesize a lot of information (Reading Styles – Skimming). The essay does not only focus on the description of skimming and cramming but also on why the two are ineffective study methods. Cramming involves trying to read and retain a lot of information within a short duration of time. On the other hand, skimming involves reading quickly through the reading material in order to search for the main idea. In that case, it is clear t hat skimming and cramming cannot be recommended to students reading for examination purposes. Works Cited Pastorino, Ellen E. and Susann M. Doyle-Portillo. What Is Psychology? Essentials. Stamford: Cengage Learning, 2008. Reading Styles – Skimming. 2011. Web.Advertising We will write a custom essay sample on Skimming and Cramming specifically for you for only $16.05 $11/page Learn More This essay on Skimming and Cramming was written and submitted by user Brice Mclean to help you with your own studies. You are free to use it for research and reference purposes in order to write your own paper; however, you must cite it accordingly. You can donate your paper here.

once were warriors essays

once were warriors essays In the movie, Once Were Warriors by Alan Duff, he explains how a family is ruined mainly because of alcohol. Once Were Warriors is a movie that is all about the truth in cultures. As we all know, alcohol usually causes negative behavior. For example, in the movie it shows how alcohol causes violence, poverty, and child abuse in a family. Alcoholism is something common in mostly every culture. Usually alcoholics do not want to realize that alcohol is the problem of many things. To alcoholics, alcohol is a substance that does not do any harm and does not hurt anyone. As shown in the video, the children and wife are victims in certain ways of the alcoholic husband/father. Therefore, we can say that every person in society is a victim of alcohol no matter if they drink or dont drink. Violence was one of the main components in the movie. It shows how the family had to live with violence instead of love. Also, it shows how the wife has to put up with the beatings, Jake the husband would give her. This is usually seen in every culture where the man drinks until he is drunk. After certain man is drunk he takes the power to beat the wife and feel that he is the boss of the relationship. I have been a witness of this situation, where the woman is always being violently beaten by the spouse. This is something that occurs everyday and everywhere. I believe that the woman can put a stop to this situation by giving herself the position she deserves. Usually the woman puts up with the violence because supposedly she loves the spouse. She may love the spouse, but she does not love herself and in order to achieve she needs to love herself and put atop to everything that causes her harm. As we all have seen, the woman always considers herself a victim of a violent relationship. Being a woman, there is not only one victim in the relationship. Every person that is involved in a drunken society ...

CAUSES OF RACE RIOTS Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 250 words

CAUSES OF RACE RIOTS - Essay Example The outbreaks of civil unrest signified a progressive movement in which the subjects were empowered and ready to question the supremacy of any race. The outbreaks of civil unrest tore down the edifice of segregation and discrimination between the races2. The African American migration, which took place between 1910 and 1970, entails African Americans movement from the rural South to the industrial North and West3. The Black migration was critical as it led to demographic changes and transformed the face of race relations in the region as African Americans became integrated into the society. The migration was also significant as it led to integration and segregation whereby it perpetuated racial divide as discrimination became rife, besides orchestrating a demographic revolution. The migration also had significant economic outcomes among the African Americans. In conclusion, the events of the 20th century unsettled and provided the impetus in transforming the political, demographic, and cultural distinctiveness of the American society as a whole. The events radically altered most of the institutions (legal, political and social), which affected race

What are the consequences of WTO accession for Russia Dissertation

What are the consequences of WTO accession for Russia - Dissertation Example In 2006, Russia had crossed an important barrier in its route to accessing the membership of World Trade Organization (WTO), with the signing of the bilateral agreement with US, though the process for a full membership would take longer to be completely realised. Russia's gradual progress in the negotiations for acquiring the WTO membership, is a positive signal for the international community, as it reflects Russia’s willingness to have an open trade relations within the global commerce. In the negotiation rounds, Russia had agreed to decrease its import tariff on the industrial and agricultural products by 3 % points, in slow progression. It had also agreed to free the domestic service sector, with a certain amount of restriction. There is a general belief that WTO accession will bring about a positive influence on the economic development of Russia by improving economic efficiency, increasing market competition, and by increasing the flow of foreign direct investment (FDI) to Russia. However, on the other hand with the opening up of the Russian markets there are some fears on the survival of the domestic firms under increasing competition from the foreign corporations. The chief objective of this paper is to understand and analyse implications that Russia may have to contend with WTO accession. Based on a secondary and qualitative form of research that involves literature review and analysis of Russia’s economy, all implications of WTO accession will be discussed to support the conclusion that WTO membership may be beneficial for Russia in the end. 1 Introduction â€Å"Russia risks taking a back seat to new post-crisis rules of world trade if it doesn’t join the WTO.†1 1.1 Background history In 1993, Russia officially applied to the General Agreement on Trade and Tariff (GATT) for accession, and in 1995, the World Trade Organization (WTO), the organization that succeeded GATT, took up its application. However, during the initial years a complete lack of political will and a general initiative by the Russian government, which was new and yet to create any structural framework to regulate the socio-economic and political environment, soon made the Russian impetus to join the WTO, lose its steam.2 After the 1998 economic crisis, as the Russian rouble deval ued, with a subsequent failure to repay the nation’s debt, the government became more involved in trying to revive the economy, with very little focus on the subject of WTO accession and the necessary negotiations. Fresh impetus to the issue was derived when the Vladimir Putin after being elected as the President of Russia in 2000, declared WTO accession as one of his prime goals, during his tenure at office. Under his interest and will, fresh rounds of negotiations and discussions were initiated. The Russian President’s declaration created a political commitment of sorts that allowed Russia to take initiative and search for meaningful resolutions, on various contentious issues related to its WTO accession. In May 2001, Russia created a ‘Review of the Russian Trade Policies,’ a report that was seen as the Protocol for the Russian accession to WTO. By early 2002, the WTO’s Working Party on Russia’s accession reviewed the first draft of the rep ort. 3 At this time, this signified that Russia had almost entered the last phase of the accession process, where it was negotiating the terms and conditions pertaining to its entry into the WTO, and contemplating the implementation of the necessary legislative reforms. However, soon there were

Energy Strategy of the European Union and its Impact on Oil and Gas Assignment

Energy Strategy of the European Union and its Impact on Oil and Gas Industry - Assignment Example Several energy-related policies and ambitious measures are being planned and executed by the member states of EU in this account.To make these plans work out quickly and efficiently, additional emphasis must be laid on issues like attaining greater energy efficiency, tapping alternate sources of energy, maximising the use of renewable energy, and making use of nuclear power (Tindale, 2014). However, when an additional emphasis is laid on these above issues, it can influence the functioning of the oil and gas industries. Furthermore, in this venture, preserving the environment is also very much indispensable and so focusing on carbon capture and storage (CCS) technology is also important (Tindale, 2014). So, this report will focus on the EU’s energy strategy and its impact on the oil and gas industries. Apart from the above-discussed political scenario, the need to come up with environment-friendly energy options has prompted EU to come up with energy efficiency policies from the start of the new millennium. That is, from the mid-2000s, EU has been setting targets for its member countries to improve its energy efficiency on short-term and importantly long-term basis. Long-term basis in the sense, at the end of 2006, the EU pledged to reduce its annual consumption of primary energy options of fossil fuels by 20% by 2020. On the same lines, the European Commission as a policy directive also framed the Energy Efficiency Directive (EED) for the EU, which establishes a general agenda for the promotion of energy efficiency within the member states. The main objective of the EED is to aid the EU’s member states to achieve a target of saving 20% of their energy consumption by 2020. According to the European Commission, the EU is on track to achieve a 20% reduction in 2020, 30% in 203 0, and importantly the long-term target 80% reduction in 2050 (Ea Energy Analyses, 2012). According to EU’s policies, the member states are stipulated to achieve energy efficiency in the above-depicted sectors including industries, transport, household, and importantly power or energy generation sector (European Commission, 2013). In the households, people are provided with individual metering scheme along with free of cost access to real-time energy consumption data which would help them in managing their energy consumption in a far better manner.

History Of The Corruption In China Politics Essay

History Of The Corruption In China Politics Essay Chinas economic ascendance puts China in a position to have many wonderful prospects. In 2008, Chinas strong economic and political systems seemed to resist the idea of a global economic crisis. Chinas massive growth has enhanced China as an important economic power in the world. With over one billion people and the second largest national economy, China is still controlled by an authoritarian political regime; the Chinese Communist Party. The Chinese Communist Party seems to be able to rule the state and keep a stable and sustainable economy. However, corruption poses a serious hindrance to Chinas economy and political systems. The failure to eliminate political corruption could cause the collapse of Chinas economy and the Chinese Communist Party in the future (Bergsten C. F 2009 P.97). Corruption also causes the biggest disaster in Chinese history, Tiananmen Square Massacre (Harris 2003). In fact, many of the developing nations that have fast economic growth seem to have a lot of p olitical corruption. Perhaps corruption in a fast developing nation is inevitable. Corruption was widespread in Singapore during the 1960s (Quah S.T. P.31). Singapore was one of the serious corruption countries during its economic development. Many of developing countries with the rapid economic growth have different levels of corruption. The argument in this paper is: corruption in authoritarian states is more prevalent than democratic states. And corruption is a deeply ingrained issue, which is not easy to remove in Chinese society and from Chinas government corruption. This paper will introduce the historical background of China after the Chinese Communist Party overthrew the Chinese Nationalist Party and it will address how its culture and people have changed under the leading Chinese Communist Party. In this paper, moreover, Chinese economic reform is the main factors to cause corruption in China (Chow G. C. 2006 P.266). Chinese economic reform is the most important revolution which is different from the original ideology of communism. Because of the economic reform Chinas great economic achievements rely on the new modern- socialist market economy- a mixture of open- market economy and state-owned enterprise. Economic reform, at the same time as political reform, or new directions of the party, has never been engaged before by the Chinese Communist Party. The causal factors of an open- market economy impacted on the new western ideologies, and the social and political climates have changed quickly in China. For these reasons, current Chinese soc iety, culture, and politics are being changed, and it is causing major internal issues, political corruption and other relative crimes. This paper will address and explain how and why Chinas economic reform, and Chinas political system, caused corruption and related crimes in contemporary with China. Also, I would like to introduce the different kinds of corruption in Chinas government and in Chinese society. For example, political corruption has influenced the entire state, as well as the leaders of its government. In China, most influential senior officials and high level business and government positions are held by the elite who have propelled their family members and caused inheritance of their power for next generations. Those powerful people are called princelings party or Crown Prince Party. They and even their relatives control most entrepreneurs, so they are capable of shifting the profits and starting the money laundering out of their state. They are the one who mostly be lieved to be involved in the political corruption in China. An example of this is the biggest political corruption case: the former of party chief Bo Xilais and his families making billions of U.S. dollars by privileged upbringing and political influence (Barboza D. April 23, 2012). Secondly, bribery is another kind of corruption in China. This paper will introduce guanxi, the practice that is such a rule and code to conduct businesses with local business partners. In China, Guanxi used to be widely translated as connections and relationships, which reflects the process and maintaining of interpersonal relationship. Guanxi is a method of exerting power to gain more benefits and it is being used succeefully in all networks of society, such as jobs and business. This paper will also analyze how Guanxi plays an important role in corruption, and more importantly, to analyze the largest amount of smuggling and bribery in Chinese history- the criminal cases of Lai Changxing. Lai Changxing operations were based on his good social networks and Guanxi, and he smuggled over  £3.3 billion, and bribed 64 officials during the 1990s (Watts J. May 18, 2012). There is a wide range of literature on corruption from which to choose, and the literature review in this paper should focus on the definition of general practice of corruption, the different levels of corruption by macro-level, and how corruption practice occurs in authoritarian states. I will explore Chinas individual case with special political and economic orientation. Peter Hays Griess book Chinese Politics: State, Society and the Market, is an excellent source in which to study the specific cases of corruption in China, and how corruption is performed in China. Yan Suns book, Corruption and Market in Contemporary China, researches the authors viewpoints and controversial points in the academic field. Richard McGregors book The Party: The Secret World of Chinas Communist Rules, is an excellent source which reveals the integrity of Chinas Communist Party and the top secret of the central power rule of the Chinese Communist Party. Literature Review Meanings of Corruption Corruption is not a new practice, but one which has existed for many years. There are various definitions of corruption in literature scholars. Corruption currently is a term which used to be studied in philosophy, social science, and political science. In general, to define corruption in academic work is usually in various forms. Klitgaad writes: In ordinary usage, too, corruption embraces a wide array of illicit behaviors, including bribery, extortion, fraud, nepotism, graft, speed money, pilferage, theft, embezzlement, falsification of records, kickbacks, influence-peddling, and campaign contributions. (Klitgaard 1998, P1.). Klitgaard (1998) gives different violations terms to describe corruption. When people are involved in these terms, they could be accused of corruption. In philosophy, corruption is a moral deviation or depravity in human behavior. In economics, it is an exchange between people who give payment to enjoy privileges and receive payment to provide services. Klitgaard (1998) indicates corruption is an illegal act, and it has expended some of terms of crimes. All these criminal activities are too narrow to understand corruption in a particular field of study. But bribery is first term that Klitgarrds (1998) pointing to as a usual term by which many people perceive corruption. By studying particularly regional corruption in this paper, bribery and the mainly characterized of authoritarian regimes, nepotism, are important fields to study in this topic of the paper. Bribery and Briber Bribery is one of the most common terms of thought under the topic of corruption. It is based on the improper acceptance, giving, receiving, offering or solicitation of a gain or advantage from the briber, including the some actions, views, advices, or decisions of a public official, or person in a position of trust, or person bound by a duty to act impartially (Bribery and Corruption Law. 2012). In bribery and corruption law, it notes that it is necessary to understand that bribery is two exchanges with purposes of payment and receiving benefits from each other. Or a person merely attempts to bribe, even though unsuccessfully, could also be considered to be a briber. On one hand, a person who provides implication of money or gift could be defined as a briber. Gifts do not only include objects of value, such as goods and property, but also includes immaterial matters, such as services and emoluments (i.e. salary, fees or other benefits). On the other hand, a person who gains all thes e advantages or materials directly or indirectly from briber could be defined as being involved in bribery. Bribe, as well as corruption, is an illegal act with different levels, and the person may be accused of corruption which is a criminal activity. Low level of Corruption: government official corruption Low level corruption is characterized often by the traffic cop asking for bribes on the street. It undermines peoples trust in political institutions and its leaders. (Kristoff M and Pertio, R May 01, 2010 P.2) There are many scholars who discuss corruption as multi-level, which involve different magnitudes of the bribe. The authors, Kristoff and Pertio (2010) argue two levels of corruption, higher and lower levels of corruption. Low level corruption has a higher impact on the social fabric of society, with small amounts of money or other benefits. It usually takes place in some government officials, institutions, or public organizations. It erodes peoples trust and the public confidence in government. Kristoff and Pertio (2010) think that police corruption is a common corruption in low level of corruption. Police can gain from corruption easily and commonly, which damages the effective security in society. Low level corruption also includes corruption of government official. Government corruption is usually defined that the sale, by government officials, of government property for personal gains. Government officials usually receive bribes from a particular person or a group of people for providing permits or licenses, for giving passage at customs, and for prohibiting the entry of competitors. Also, government officials charge privately the products for their own using. (Shleifer. A and Vishny. R. W. May 1993. P3) In addition, government officials note that the cost of producing goods is immaterial to the official since the government pays this cost. They cover the sale of licenses, passports, or a passage on a government toll- charged road, or a policeman sells services that he is supposed to offer for free, and this exerts personal effort (Shleifer. A and Vishny. R. W. May 1993. P5). The authors, Shleifer and Vishny (1993) clarify how government officials or police offices engage in corruption and provide different offers to bribers. Government officials include particular institutions or organizations by the government, which has an obligation to provide public services, such as educational institutions. These institutions do not have rights to sell any products or services privately, and expropriate any frees by unofficial announcement. Based on the authority of government officials, such as policemen, they may force or inflict the charging fees which are supposed or obligate to be provides free services. In some weak governments, they even sell passports and drivers licenses, as long as people could make a certain payment or provide personal connections within the government. People living under a weak deviant government do not a desk to compliant or report police and government misconduct. This causes some government officials, such as police officers, to provide or to force charging fees for services which are received from the briber. Because there can b e an absolute execution by powerful people, this prevents the right to inspect government procedures and activities. Therefore this results government corruption becoming serious. High Level of Corruption: Political Corruption A high level of corruption usually involves substantial amounts of payment, and it often involves senior levels of government officials. The procurement of high level corruption can deal with the massive amounts of money, but it has a high secrecy from the public. (Kristoff, M Pertio, R May 01, 2010 P.2) Kristoff and Pertio (2010) indicate high level corruption that appears in higher level senior of the government or leading politicians. It has also involves a massive amount of money in procurement. Unlike low level of corruption, high level corruption has a lower impact on society, and people or citizens do not recognize high level corruption on the daily lives. Moreover, some political party in power requires their members to dominate government positions. Its members can be controlling key positions in awarding government contracts with businesses for a price of a briber, and then give money to the party. The illicit activities, including funds or huge infrastructure projects cou ld be funneled into the party (Governance, Corruption and Conflict, 2010, P.12). In this article, the author examines how politicians and businesses corruption and gain benefits. High level of corruption often involves in politicians or political parties who could influence public decisions, politics and rules. It is a common skill for most misconduct political leaders and their party to start political corruption when they are in office. Politicians utilize their political power in a state, and they attempt to dominate all key positions by appointing their party members or even their relatives. Most government contracts are assigned by particular businesses that would have provided bribes to the politicians for getting governmental contracts. For businesses, they could be a huge infrastructure project, such as bridge and freeway. This can be considered as a high level political corruption. Citizens usually cannot recognize the serious political corruption in the state. Therefore, i t causes that high level corruption of political parties and politicians occur in both democratic and autocratic countries. Meanwhile, high level of corruption often occurs in election campaigns in democratic states. In order to remain in office, politician may manipulate election campaigns by corruption related to campaign financing, which is a serious political issue in some states. Some elect officials help the welfare of people in constituencies, in the hopes of getting their votes. For example, a politician may be required to present expensive gifts at a wedding by a supporter in the electoral district. Or a politician may also need to participate wed receptions, birthday parties, celebrations and fund raising ceremonies that can cost huge amounts on elected officials (Myint U. December 02. 2000 P.40). To Myint (2000), high level corruption especially occurs on politicians in some democratic countries. In which the politicians or leaders of states are elected by citizens. Therefore, election campaign contributions are placed in high importance to them. Soliciting financial contributions for the elect ion campaign is extremely important for every candidate because it may very well determine whether or not the candidate wins the election. In order to have sufficient funds for an election, campaign most candidates attempt to draw contributions from the people or from entrepreneurs in the election campaign of their political parties. These rich people, entrepreneurs or dignitary, will provide benefits to the new leaders in the future government. And these benefits may foster many of the connections between leaders and entrepreneurs, which may result in the politicians participating in different gatherings of entrepreneurs. This could cost huge amounts of money to the government. Corruption in Autocracies Corruption in Autocratic and Corruption in Democratic States There are many scholars to argue that corruption in autocratic country is higher than democratic country. According to the article Governance, Corruption and Conflict, one-party system has a higher potential for corruption. This is because of the lack of checks and balances in their countries. Without checks on government and a strong public voice that can cause difficultly if it sees corruption, there will be no one who can accomplish putting pressure on the government for accountability and transparency. There is also the argument that democratic states have lower of corruption. Corruption exists in all societies, but democratic systems have a high check on corruption (Governance, Corruption and Conflict, 2010, P.10). The writer argues that corruption is more prevalent in autocratic states. The authoritarian states have more corruption is not surprising. He explains there are some major factors including the lack of check from the public, no independent media, and no public voice, with the result that widespread corruption cannot be combated efficiently. Most authoritarian states are closed societies in which the government controls newspapers, television broadcasts and internet. Therefore, citizens cannot hold the government to be transparent. The writer states there is no guarantee that a state can free from corruption. But in most democratic states, fair elections and the stronger public voice determine the nature and integrity of the government and the leadership. Corruption can be recognized by citizens based on the structure of government, and people can check government by different ways. Most democratic states have corruption investigations and anti-corruption agencies that can efficiently combat corruptions. But, unlike democratic states, most authoritarian states do not have strong independent commissions to combat and investigate corruption. It concludes that corruptions in autocratic states are higher than corruptions in democratic states. Meanwhi le, the redistributive demands by the poors mute voices and their oppression have little or no effect, when the rich have a direct political power, or easy access to political authorities, in countries with authoritarian regimes (Khagram You. December 09, 2003. P.3). Khagram and You (2003) illustrate that the degree of unequal redistributive demands between two groups of people, the poor and the rich, have different social status, which determines if the people can speak out or not. The rich, with higher social status can express themselves much easier and have easier access to government. Thus, the greater disparity between the poor and the rich, the greater is impact of high corruption in authoritarian or communist countries. Dictatorship corruption In most authoritarian states, a significant contribution to corruption is the deviated behavior of leaders. Authoritarian or totalitarian regimes do not have an institutionalized provision for succession. So, leaders in personalist dictatorships face uncertainty regarding their political futures. In dictatorships, government officials are without a democracys preoccupation and concern about their citizens evaluations. A Dictator can be considered to be a robbery, who steals the state for satisfying their short-term desires and needs, but might ultimately destroy the states economy in the long-term consequences. They completely control public life and maintain resources to benefit its elites and other strategic coalitions (Harmel Yeh 2011 P. 2, Ezrow Frantz 2011 P. 134). Ezrow Frantz (2011) argue that most dictators are only desired to dominate their power in their state and hold most executive positions, or even control their whole state by appointing executive positions. They onl y abuse tangible power for their own interests. Ezrow and Frantz (2011) describe leaders in authoritarian states as robbers, who dare to misappropriate the states natural resources and public lives. Importantly, they also determine to increase their personal wealth. Only corruption can enable them to satisfy their own interests. There are many of State-owned enterprises, such as telecommunications and television broadcasting, when, in fact, the dictator and his elites monopolize these enterprises and embezzle the funds of the state-owned enterprises. On the other hand, citizens live under an authoritarian regime suffer different levels of social control, including information control, cultural control, or even thought control. Thought control, which is one of the social controls, is used by most dictators to consolidate their political power in their states (Oh, K. and Hassig,R.C. 2000 P. 140). Thought control teaches that loyalty to the leader is necessary for every citizen, who sh ould obey their leaders completely. It is similar to a cult of personality where monarchs or leaders are held in reverence. Without the citizens inspection, corruption in authoritarian states cannot be perceived, and this has contributed to rampant dictator corruption. So the dictator and his political corruption is one of the main types of corruption in authoritarian states. Nepotism By discussing the character of corruption in authoritarian or communist regimes, it is important to understand how nepotism is practice in these societies. Communist officials consistently prove that they are corruptible and nepotistic. It is not the first time to notice that nepotism thrives in communist bureaucracies, such as the Soviet nomenklatura, is a famous for nepotism during the 1920s (Bellow July 13, 2004, P.98). Bellow (2004) argues that nepotism is a common term within communist regimes. Some communist states announce that nepotism is a rule for dictators to consolidate their power in a country. In fact, this is an informal and personal mode, which is commonly adopted by government officials and societies in communist countries. The widespread building of nepotism in a social network is important for the governmental elites to hold their positions and enlarge their influence in the government. According to The Clearing House, it clarifies the meanings of nepotism in a nor mal society: Nepotism in Georgia schools, as well as over the nation, is one of the most serious hindrances to the development of a democratic and effective system. On almost every hand we find wives, daughter, sons and in-laws of members of boards of education teaching in our public schools. In many places a system of reciprocity is in vogue where one board member agrees to vote for anothers kin in return for a vote for his own kin. There is nothing good about nepotism. It is unfair to the teacher for it creates envy among other teachers who feel that many earned advances are the result of favoritism (The Clearing House 2005). To the author, nepotism is a serious hindrance to the social network. The author (2005) gives a negative view to nepotism because he thinks that it carries an unequal treatment of people in both democratic countries and in authoritarian countries. Nepotism is a powerful influence for people to have great achievements in jobs and politics. Based on favored groups and social relationships, such as friends or relatives, people engaging in nepotism could be appointed or granted a position, or promoted or employed in government positions, as well as in some enterprises. When people rely on this informal mode, however, it often becomes a significant deviation in most societies, from what is good. It has been usually included in the topic of corruption, because nepotism carries many of conveniences which characterize the one who is bribed and the briber who corrupts others. Methodology I began the research by reading a lot of books and journal articles that consisted of topics relating to corruption, such as corruption in China, and political corruption in China. By understanding the characteristics of Chinas corruption, I should first study general corruption in the world, and how different practical modes of corruption are used in different states. Second, corruption in similar regimes has similar features, so corruption in both authoritarian and communist states should be discussed in this topic. Most authoritarian and communist states have similar political systems, such as one-party system or dictatorship. To succeed in this paper, it is important to know the factors of a topic, Corruption in China, including the contribution of Chinese economic reform, the Chinese political system, and Chinas society today. I have also gathered all information for this paper by accessing most sources from online to find media sources which include Google scholar, ProQuest, Le xisNexis, JSTOR and some of Chinas websites, such as China Daily. Using Google scholar to search primary sources mostly, it widely provides numerous relevant articles. And some websites including CNN International, South China Morning Post, New York Times and China Daily provide many useful cases that I can study for this paper. For example, the case of former of party Chief Bo Xilai and his families who stole billions of U.S. dollars. And the case of Lai Changxing, who bribed numerous of officials and smuggled products with values of billions of pounds.

Legalization of Marijuana is Necessary :: Argumentative Persuasive Argument Essays

  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚   Marijuana has been unfairly villainized and prohibited in America. Legalization offers a practical, effective, and humane approach to dealing with marijuana use. In the following pages I will point out the inconsistency and hypocrisy of America’s marijuana laws, some of the problems with our current methods for controlling illegal drug use, and some of the possible advantages of legalization. It is unclear exactly why the recreational use of marijuana became of such concern to some people in the first place, but much of the information published and testimony made to Congress on the subject in the 1930’s was simply ludicrous. A 1936 article from the American Journal of Nursing claimed that a marijuana smoker â€Å"will suddenly turn with murderous violence upon whomever is nearest to him† (Bring Drugs 13). In 1937, Harry Anslinger, then head of the Federal Bureau of Narcotics (now the Drug Enforcement Agency) testified before Congress that â€Å"Marijuana is the most violence causing drug in the history of mankind,† and that â€Å"Most marijuana smokers are Negroes, Hispanics, Filipinos, and entertainers. Their Satanic music, jazz and swing, result from marijuana usage. This marijuana causes white women to seek sexual relations with Negroes† (Bouril 4).   Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚   Some theorize that anxiety over the decline in size and power of the Federal Bureau of Narcotics after the 1933 repeal of Alcohol Prohibition is what caused Anslinger to push so hard for the prohibition of marijuana (4). The preposterous lies told about the effects of marijuana usage by people like Anslinger has led others to believe that there was a hidden agenda behind the Marijuana Tax Act of 1937 - to eliminate hemp. In 1916 the U.S. Department of Agriculture announced, in Bulletin No. 404, that one acre of hemp would produce as much pulp as four acres of trees, and that if a machine for stripping hemp were developed it would be unnecessary to cut down forest to make paper (Bock 3). Shortly before the passage of the Act, state of the art stripping and pulping machines were available and a few were in use. An article written for Popular Mechanics entitled â€Å"New Billion-Dollar Crop† discussed how this new technology would make hemp â €Å"the most profitable and desirable crop that can be grown† (Bouril 5). Unfortunately, the article was not published until February of 1938 - a day late and a dollar short. There is considerable evidence that the

Hr Provision Essay

Provision function: is a consecutive process of human resources planning, job analysis, recruitment, selection, placement and incorporation. HR Planning The ongoing process of systematic planning is to achieve optimum use of an organization’s most valuable asset – its human resources. The objective of HR planning is to ensure the best fit between employees and jobs, while avoiding manpower shortages or surpluses. Sands Corporation would have to look at the three key elements of the HR planning process, which are: forecasting labour demand, analyzing present labour supply, and balancing projected labour demand and supply. Proper human resource planning will enable Sands HR department to plan recruitment, selection, training and career development . The HR plan needs to be flexible enough to meet short-term staffing challenges, while adapting to changing conditions in the business and environment over the longer term. Job Analysis and Design Job analysis is the process by which HR systematically investigate the task, duties and responsibilities of the jobs within an organisation. For human resource to be effective, Sands HR must be aware of the essentials that amount to each position. That is there should be a process whereby the substance, demands and responsibilities of a job are determined. Therefore two sets of information should originate from job analysis. First, Job Description which is the document that identifies and defines: a job in terms of duties, responsibilities, tasks and supervisory relationships. Second, Job Specification which is a written statement which emphasises the characteristics required from the incumbent to perform the job successfully, which should include skills, abilities and knowledge . Recruitment and selection the process of acquiring applicants who are available and qualified to fill the positions and choosing from a group of applicants the individual best suited for a particular position. Recruitment usually comes about as a result of HR planning and vacant positions that have to be filled. The staffing personnel, should use the job analysis as the point of departure, and follow steps such as recruitment planning, recruitment action (how, where and when), the type of recruiting source, screening and selecting . HR manager and the staffing personnel should through the recruiting process, consider the legal aspects as well, such as the labour Relation Act, No. 66 of 1995, the Basic Conditions of Employment Act, No. 75 of 1997 and the Employment Equity Act, no. 55 of 1998. Placement this is the process by which the staffing specialist will place a new appointed employee in an organisation, or transfer existing employees are transferred to new posts. Placement is important because of the heterogeneity of the labour groups. The staffing personnel should make sure that there is â€Å"FIT† between the job itself and the new job incumbent, so that there would be high productivity and a lower turn over from the new incumbent. It should be clear that placement is a combination of the employers’ requirement to fill a position successfully and the employee’s motivation to reach the top. Incorporation The specialist in training and development should attend and make sure that the new employee settles into the new position. The employee should be provided with the information regarding the organisation and its culture through orientation, must also be given specific information about the position and the department should be given through induction. The new employee must be made to feel part of the new work group as soon as possible. The training personnel need to explain the organisations policies, rules and regulations to the new employee as well as counter negative influences by fellow workers.

Assessing Quality of the Products and Services

Assessing Quality of the Products and Services Products and services have a collection of features that enable a customer to rate quality of the goods and services for satisfaction. The views to determine the overall quality of product and service include product design, services delivery, and the overall process of delivering product or services. This paper focuses on assessing product and service quality.Advertising We will write a custom essay sample on Assessing Quality of the Products and Services specifically for you for only $16.05 $11/page Learn More According to Lewis et al (2007, p. 447) there are many factors for rating a products quality, but it depends on the type. For example, I went to a beauty shop to buy a face cream for removing blackheads, which I thought could be effective after some time but did not see any improvements. The factors which I used to gauge the product include the brand name, products ingredients, its effectiveness and price. The product contained a trusted brand name a nd I thought that it was effective and hence, I rated it at 9 out of 10. The product also had many ingredients, which appeared to be natural and so I rated it at 5 point. Since the product was not effective as expected, I rated it at 1 because there were no changes after applying it. Due to the products’ ineffectiveness, and despite the high price, the products rating were at 4 point. I discovered that it is not always true that the higher the price of a product, the better it is as compared to those with lower costs. Based on the results of the rating, the brand name was at 9 point, ingredients at 5, and effectiveness of the product at 1, and the price at 4. Hence, the total number of all the ratings was 19. I got the average of the total points by dividing the total by the four factors and a rating of 4.75. In service quality, I used many determinants when I visited a national library, but did not get the best services. First, there was no proper responsiveness whenever I n eeded assistance in locating my books of interest. The rate of responsiveness was of 4 out of 10. In addition, there was no ease of accessing the reading materials because they were mixed up in the shelf, thus the rating was 5 out of 10. At the main entrance the library staff was not courteous and polite to customers, thus courtesy rating was at 3 out of 10. The library also lacked competent staff because I noticed that they did not have the proper skills and knowledge for providing the services when I tried to enquire more about the library, hence competency rating was at 2 out of 10. It was not easy to communicate since there were no staffs ready to listen to the customers and thus, communication rating was at 4 out of 10. Similarly, security of the bags and other items left at the shelf was not guaranteed because some of the shelves did not have number tags and we left the bags without being assured of their security: it is possible for another customer to pick a bag that does no t belong to him hence the security rating was at 6. The staff did not bother to understand individual customer needs and hence, the rating was at 5.Advertising Looking for essay on business economics? Let's see if we can help you! Get your first paper with 15% OFF Learn More Based at all the service ratings, the responsiveness had 4 points, ease of accessing had 5 points, and courtesy was at 3 points, staff competency was at 2 points, communication was at 4 points, security was at 6 points and finally understanding customer needs was at 5 points. The ratings were all out of 10 and thus, when I added all of them the result was 29. I got the overall average service rating by dividing the number of points by the number of factors and the average was at 4.14. In conclusion, it is important for companies and organizations to focus on customer satisfaction by providing the best services and giving quality products. Wirtz (2003) suggests that to determine the custo mers’ perception of a product and a service, businesses should seek to understand the customers’ experience when using the product or getting the service, and what they say about them because the final financial results are based on customer satisfaction and quality. References Lewis, P. S., Goodman, S. H., Fandt, P. M., Michlitsch, J. F. (2007). Management: Challenges for Tomorrows Leaders (5th Ed.). Mason, OH: Cengage Learning. p 36. Wirtz, J. Meng, C. L. (2003). An Empirical Study on The Quality and Context-specific Applicability of Commonly Used Customer Satisfaction Measures. Journal of Service Research, 5(4), 345-355.

Causes of Corruption Essays

Causes of Corruption Essays Causes of Corruption Essay Causes of Corruption Essay Econ Gov (2008) 9:245–263 DOI 10. 1007/s10101-007-0033-4 O R I G I NA L PA P E R Causes of corruption: a survey of cross-country analyses and extended results Lorenzo Pellegrini  · Reyer Gerlagh Received: 30 September 2005 / Accepted: 20 October 2006 / Published online: 23 February 2007  © Springer-Verlag 2007 Abstract We survey and assess the empirical literature on the sources of corruption Thanks to the improved availability of data, we are able to produce an improved cross-country econometric model to test well-established and more recent hypotheses jointly. We do not ? nd that the common law system, or a past as a British colony predicts corruption. Our results support cultural theories on the causes of corruption, and suggest that a medium-long exposure to uninterrupted democracy is associated with lower corruption levels, while political instability tends to raise corruption. Our results also suggest that the diffusion of newspapers helps to lower corruption levels. Keywords Corruption  · Ethnolinguistic fractionalization  · Democracy  · Political instability JEL classi? ation D72  · H11  · H50  · K42  · O17 L. Pellegrini (B ) Institute of Social Studies (ISS), Kortenaerkade 12, 2518 AX The Hague, The Netherlands e-mail: [emailprotected] nl L. Pellegrini  · R. Gerlagh Institute for Environmental Studies (IVM), Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam, Amsterdam, The Netherlands R. Gerlagh University of Manchester, School of Social Sciences, Economics, Manchester, UK 246 L. Pellegrini, R. Gerlagh 1 Introduction Corruption is a wide spread phenomenon affecting all societies to different degrees, at different times. On the one hand, as corruption scandals have repeatedly shown, bribes are common in all countries notwithstanding differences in income levels and law systems, as they are common in democracies and in dictatorships. Recent scandals over corruption have shown that also supposedly free-from-corruption societies are affected. The ELF scandal demonstrated that corruption was rampant in the management of the French state owned enterprise. 1 The following year, a corruption charge against President Chirac could not be courted because he was shielded by immunity as the head of the state. Also in Germany, the CDU and former Chancellor Helmut Kohl were ? ned for receiving illegal campaign funding. 3 Among Nordic countries (which rank always among the less corrupt in international comparisons), Swedish and Norwegian managers of state owned companies have been found to be involved in bribe-taking. 4 Corruption is not rare even during humanitarian emergencies. According to Transparency Internati onal, an NGO who strives to expose corruption, relief efforts in the aftermath of the South East Asian Tsunami earthquake of 2004 were hampered by corruption. Still, different countries are marked by large differences to the extent of corruption. In some societies, no transaction is ? nalized without corruption having an effect, while in other countries it is considered an exception and rarely tolerated. Figure 1 presents corruption levels worldwide; the ? gure shows that corruption tends to be pervasive especially in developing countries. At the same time, numerous studies have demonstrated the pernicious effects of corrupted practices on- among other things- economic growth, investment, human development and environmental policies. The relevance of corruption for welfare levels requires the understanding of the sources of corruption (and of differences across countries) and the development of policies to address the phenomenon of corruption. Hard evidence of corruption is intrinsically dif? cult to obtain, because of the secrecy surrounding illegal deals, but there are several ways to obtain proxies of the extent of corruption. One such source comes from the pool of international interviews commissioned for the Global Corruption Perception Barometer (Transparency International, 2004). From the barometer, we can see that while around 90% of Brazilians think that petty and grand corruption are ‘very big problems’, around 50% of Finnish interviewees think that petty corruption is ‘no problem at all’ and around 35% think that also grand corruption is no problem. With respect to the personal experiences of individuals with bribery, 1 On the ELF scandal see The Washington Post, Wednesday, February 9, 2000; Page A21. 2 http://archives. cnn. com/2001/WORLD/europe/10/10/chirac. court/. 3 businessweek. com/magazine/content/01_48/b3759151. htm. Corruption Blackens Nordic Region’s Lily-White Image, Agence France Presse, December 4, 2003. 5 transparency. org/pressreleases_archive/2005/faq_tsunami. html#faqti1. Causes of corruption 247 Fig. 1 A higher score (a darker color) indicates higher corruption perception. Our elaboration on data from Kaufmann et al. (2005) we see that more than 50% of Cameroon’s interviewees admit that somebody in their household paid a bribe in the last 12 months, while among Austrian, Canadian, German and Irish interviewees only 1% mentioned exposure to corruption for their households in the last year. Evidence on private ? rms’ expenditures for bribes is available from the World Business Environment Survey 2000. 6 From the executives’ interviews in the survey, we see for example that while more than 90% of Canadian ? rms declare that they did not pay any bribes in the last year, none of the Armenian and Azerbaijani ? rms interviewed declared so. Once we consider the negative effects of corruption on welfare, an obvious research question arises: what is the reason for corruption to be common in some countries while other countries succeed to prevent corruption from hampering their welfare? While theoretical literature on this subject abounds, empirical studies are relatively scarce. Since several indexes of corruption perception have become available over the last few years, it is now possible to test statistically some of the ideas from the theoretical literature. To the knowledge of the authors, the most comprehensive and widely cited econometric analysis of the sources of corruption is a cross-sectional study from Treisman (2000). 7 The study takes into consideration and tests empirically a wide range of theoretical explanations of corruption and ? nds mostly ‘? xed factors’ as the determinants of corruption. That is, the signi? cant explanatory variables are all persistent over time, impossible to change in the short and medium run. The most policy-amenable variable is the ‘exposition to democracy for more than 46 years’. As the sources of corruption are persistent, corruption itself will remain stable over time and can hardly be affected by policies; corrupted countries should 6 See http://info. worldbank. org/governance/wbes/. 7 This relatively recent paper has been already cited in 59 other works according to ISI Web of Science (checked on the 18th September 2005). 248 L. Pellegrini, R. Gerlagh ather learn to live with it. Treisman’s study will be the point of departure of our work. 8 Previous and subsequent empirical studies- mostly cross sectional- have focused more on single issues where the authors have tested a particular theory by inserting a proxy for a speci? c variable into multiple regressions. These studies most often produced results that con? rmed the theories that were tested and, while they are valuable contributions for the identi? cation of likely sources of corruption, they may have over-emphasized the importance of the variables analyzed because of omitted variables biases. Several studies focused on the role of democracy as a determinant of corruption (among the most recent: Sung 2004; Chowdhury 2004 and Bohara et al. 2004), some focused on regulatory burden and economic freedom (Chafuen and Guzman 1999), others have focused on decentralization and federalism (e. g. Fisman and Gatti 2002; Arikan 2004), on natural resources prevalence as a source of income in the economy (Leite and Weidmann 1999), and on legal origins of a country as a determent of corruption (Glaeser and Shleifer 2002). In our paper we will ? rst provide a systematic overview of different theories on the causes of corruption. In this survey, presented in Sect. 2, we distinguish theories that focus on historical roots versus theories that give more attention to contemporary causes. Thereafter, we will assess the different theories and calculate our own estimates of the sources of corruption in a comprehensive econometric model, using indexes of corruption that have become available recently (Kaufmann et al. 2005) and we will cover a large sample of countries. Furthermore, we will make use of some independent variables that are improved proxies for the variables that theory would suggest. The empirical contribution of this paper is threefold. First, due to improved data availability, we can work with a larger data sample that give more power to our statistical tests compared to earlier studies. 9 Second, we have a large set of independent variables available that we can test jointly so that we do not suffer from omitted variable bias, a problem of many previous and partial studies that may have overemphasized the importance of the variables under consideration. This advantage is particularly valuable as it helps us to assess the importance of long-lived versus contemporary causes of corruption, while these sources of corruption have mostly been assessed independently, so far. Thirdly, a crucial advantage over previous authors is the availability of two alternative corruption indexes, which can be used for robustness checks of the ? ndings. Section 3 describes the data that we use for our own econometric analysis, Sect. 4 introduces and discusses the econometric estimates, and Sect. 5 concludes. 8 Lambsdorff 1999 provides a comprehensive survey of earlier empirical results. 9 Speci? cally, when we compare our study to Treisman’s, we ? nd that our sample is larger than 100 countries in most regressions, while Treisman’s sample size is between 44 and 64 countries in the majority of regressions. Causes of corruption 249 2 Theories of corruption’s determinants Theories of corruption’s determinants (and more generally of the quality of government) abound. We will take as a starting point the theories on the sources of corruption that are mentioned in Treisman (2000) and La Porta et al. (1999) as those studies are considered a benchmark in the literature and they provided a powerful battery of empirical tests. To these we will add the most recent ? ndings of empirically backed literature in order to test and build upon their ? ndings. The subsequent econometric estimates will follow a similar approach. 2. 1 Historical roots of corruption Among the theories that relate the history of countries to their present day levels of corruption, legal theories suggest that the kind of law codes that are in place in a country affect the quality of government, including the level of control of corruption. Historically motivated theories trace the effort of property owners to limit the discretionary power of the Crown as the origin of common law legal codes (Glaeser and Shleifer 2002). Furthermore, they suggest that the actions of the independent judiciary system in countries that adopted the British law code will be conductive to lower levels of corruption (for a discussion in depth, see La Porta et al. 1999). Another theory, also based on the historical roots of corruption, is one that sees former British colonies as having a better civil service code due to the in? uence of the British bureaucracy. In this system, the British civil servant is focused on procedural aspects of the law, which enhances the capability of subordinates and judges to challenge hierarchies in order to enforce the law (Treisman 2000). However, as a result of the method with which colonization was imposed upon countries, this positive effect of British colonization can be questioned. Quoting Macaulay (1843/2001)’ the business of a servant of the [East India] Company was simply to wring out of the natives a hundred or two hundred thousand pounds as speedily as possible, that he might return home before his constitution had suffered from the heat, to marry a peer’s daughter, to buy rotten boroughs in Cornwall, and to give balls in St. James’s Square’. 0 If British colonizers were extracting resources, in addition to establishing legal procedures, the effect of colonization on present corruption deserves to be tested. Another hypothesis, which has been put under scrutiny in previous literature, is that Protestant religion, being relatively less hierarchical when compared to other churches and religions (such as the Orthodox and Catholic churches and Muslims), is less prone to tolerance towa rds power abuses and corruption. Furthermore, the Protestant church has traditionally been apart from the state and played a role of opposition to the abuses of the government (Treisman 2000). 0 Macaulay was in India working for the Supreme Council of India and later became a member of the British Parliament. 250 L. Pellegrini, R. Gerlagh Thus this theory suggests that Protestant countries will be less affected by corruption. Also pointing at long-living causes of corruption are those theories that suggest that more ethnically fractionalized countries tend to be more corrupted (Mauro 1995). One root of the link between ethnolinguistic fractionalization and corruption can be existence of alternative af? liations and obedience with respect to the state. Thus, in ethnically divided societies civil servants and politicians would exploit their positions to favor members of their own ethnic group. Another possible explanation for the effect that ethnolinguistic fractionalization would have on corruption is due to the fact that divided societies tend to under-provide public goods and this, in turn, would augment the dependency on special bounds to obtain essential services from the state. 2. 2 Contemporary causes of corruption Another set of theories relates the level of corruption to institutions, economic structures, and the level of development. These theories provide more of an entrance for anti-corruption policy compared to the theories based on historic variables, as there are some policy-amenable factors among the determinants of corruption. To start with, income levels may affect corruption in several ways. Richer countries can be expected to afford better institutions. Furthermore, many variables correlated with income, such as schooling levels, urbanization and access to mass media, are associated with higher development levels and they decrease the tolerance of the polity towards corruption. It may need some development to recognize corruption as a violation of the border between the public and the private sphere. Thus we expect a real income variable to be negatively correlated with corruption, where causality may run in both directions. The rent-seeking literature emphasizes the link between corruption and possibilities for economic agents to gain access to sources of higher-than-average rents, when state intervention prevents free entry (see Rose-Ackerman 1999). In this perspective, the ? ght against corruption is helped with a reduction of non-generic state regulation. Thus, corruption would be associated to the size of government activities (Chafuen and Guzman 1999; Acemoglu and Verdier 2000). On a similar train of thought, openness to trade and increasing supply of foreign products on the domestic market enhances domestic competition, thereby reducing rents and corruption. Conversely, trade-barriers increase the opportunities for earning extra rents by gaining access to trade allowances, stimulating corruption. Natural resources are a common source of high rents, available to those that have obtained the rights for their exploration and extraction. These rents promote activities aiming at in? uencing policy makers who have power on the distribution of exploitation rights, drawing away resources from other productive activities (La Porta et al. 1999). Thus natural resources abundance would be associated to higher corruption, though we cannot take this effect for granted Causes of corruption 251 since revenues from natural resources could also be used in order to produce public goods, decreasing the need to revert to bribing in order to access them. Another strand of the literature considers the relation between social institutions and corruption, starting with democracy. A negative correlation between democracy and corruption is tautological when based on a substantial de? nition of democracy, since corruption favors the interests of the individual, or a minority, as opposed to the interests of the majority. Once we consider democracy from a procedural perspective (free elections and electoral competitions) the association is less straightforward. Most indexes of democracy are based on the procedural aspects of democracy, and revious empirical studies have found contrasting results. Many papers that focus on democracy and employ few control variables ? nd contemporary democracy to decrease corruption levels (e. g. Hill 2003; Chowdhury 2004; Bohara et al. 2004), while more comprehensive studies do not ? nd such a correlation (Treisman 2000). The experience of some Latin American countries suggests that the transition to democrac y did not produce much of a dividend in terms of a reduction in corruption. A telling example is Mexico. Up to 2000, the country was ruled for seven decades by the PRI, known for its cronies and patronage system. Then, for the ? rst time, a president was elected that was not from the PRI. This was considered a turning point for Mexican democracy, but the following years were marked by corruption scandals that affected virtually all political parties, including the ruling party (the PAN, which has gained power on its platform promoting change and a ? ght against corruption),11 the former ruling party PRI, the other opposition party (the PRD)12 and even the marginal ecologist party. 3 Also in Europe, cases of corruption in long-established democracies abound; the above-mentioned high-level scandals in France are one example. As another example, Italy scores very high on all indexes of corruption, despite having been a democracy with high levels of electoral competition for six decades. Looking at democracy, not from a procedural but from a dynamics point of view, leads us to political sta bility as another variable that may affect corruption levels. In politically stable administrations, bureaucrats face less chances of dismissal and have more opportunity for long-run advancement in their careers, which provides an incentive to build an open and honest reputation for a career development. On the other hand, a permanent position in power may help maintain ‘patronage and corruption’ reputations and relations. There are therefore two alternative and contradictory hypotheses on whether corruption is discouraged or fostered by political stability (Treisman 2000). Apart from the duration of a job in the administration, the wages may also affect the vulnerability to corruption. Higher wages imply higher costs when 11 President Fox has been accused of using illegal funds to ? nance his campaign, see http://news. bbc. co. uk/hi/spanish/latin_america/newsid_2802000/2802161. stm. 12 On the tape-scandals, involving the most important aides of Lopez Obrador, see http://news. bbc. co. uk/hi/spanish/latin_america/newsid_3531000/3531475. stm. 13 On the scandal involving the young leader of the Partido Verde Ecologista, see smas. com/noticierostelevisa/mexico/345598. html. 252 L. Pellegrini, R. Gerlagh a position in the civil service is lost, and a cost-bene? t analysis suggests that higher wages thereby provide an incentive to restrain from corruption (Becker 1968; Treisman 2000). Finally, we look at a rather different institutional variable, recently studied in both theoretical and empirical work: the extent of newspaper circulation, where the press i s supposed to act as a check on those that should represent the public interest (Brunetti and Weder 2003). The hypothesis claims that corruption scandals being freely enquired and exposed by the mass medias, acts as a deterrent for bureaucrats to engage in corruption activities. 3 Data sources on corruption In this section we describe our dataset and the underpinning concept of corruption. The other variables will be described below as they are introduced in the econometric analysis. The variables’ sources are listed in the Appendix together with their descriptive statistics. The assessment of corruption levels across countries is a formidable empirical challenge as corruption is dif? ult to de? ne uniformly, being culturally determined, and even more dif? cult to measure, because illegality implies secrecy. We will use data that complies with the general de? nition of â€Å"abuse of power for personal gains†14 from the World Bank15 (Kaufmann et al. 2005) and Transparency International. 16 The two datasets are similar in the sense that they gather existing measures on the pe rception of corruption, and produce an aggregate index. In this paper, we will use the data from the World Bank in the main analysis and the index from Transparency International as a robustness check. The individual indexes aggregated in order to create the proxies of corruption (or, more precisely of corruption’s perception), range from Gallup’s opinion surveys- where a sample of the polity is asked how common corruption is and at what scale it operates- to surveys of company executives that estimate the share of their companies’ revenues that are spent in bribes. 17 On the one hand, the high correlation of the aggregated indexes, originated from different sources, gives some con? dence on the fact that they are correct proxies for corruption. On the other hand, it should be noted that the de? ition of corruption can be interpreted differently in different cultural contexts and that there can be ‘emotionally driven’ answers to survey: thus, while a corruption scandal is escalating, the interviewees will possibly overrate the level of corruption, just as when the economy is booming interviewees can have a more positive attitude also about the gove rnment and the civil servants. While some of these 14 For an overview of complexities and the evolution in social sciences of the de? nition of corruption see Williams 1999. 15 Available at worldbank. rg/wbi/governance/data. html. 16 Available at icgg. org/. 17 For a full description of all the sources and of the aggregation methodology used by the World Bank, see Kaufmann et al. 2005; for sources and methodology of the Transparency International index, see Lambsdorff 2004. Causes of corruption 253 concerns are taken care of by the way the polls are realized and aggregated, a margin of uncertainty is inevitable (see Kaufmann et al. 2005). Furthermore, as it has been shown extensively in the empirical literature, even though these indexes may de? e the perception of corruption over its essence, it appears that perceptions have an impact on the economy and that the indexes have a high explanatory power when used as independent variables in econometric analyses (for a review see Jain 2001). Lastly, from the descriptive statistics of Table 2, note that the corruption index has a mean of 0 and a standard deviation of around 1. 18 Thus our results can be easily interpreted in standardized form. 4 Empirical analysis In this section we provide cross-country estimates of the sources of corruption, highlighting where and why our data and results differ from previous studies. Following Treisman’s (2000) methods, we will ? rstly test the hypotheses- already summarized in the previous section- based on the more stable variables and subsequently include variables that can change over time and that can more easily be in? uenced by public policies. Our preferred estimation technique is weighted least squares regressions, where the weights of the estimates are the reciprocal of the margins of errors of the corruption index for each individual observation (as estimated by Kaufmann et al. 005). Thus, the estimates of corruption perception that are more uniform across sources are considered more reliable and get a higher weight in the regressions. 19 The dataset on corruption perception is very extended and includes a number of very small countries with typical features (e. g. having an attractive investment climate) that can easily lead to selection bias in our results. 20 For this reason, we omit from the empirical analysis countries that have less than 1 ,000,000 inhabitants. We begin including as independent variables in our regressions a dummy variable for the common law system, a dummy for British colonies including the UK itself,21 a measure of the percentage of protestants in the population, a measure of ethnolinguistic fractionalization, and a resource abundance 18 The standard deviation is exactly equal to 1 in the complete sample, but because of missing data it changes slightly in each sample. 19 Our results hold also for ordinary least squares estimations, but as expected weighted least squares produce more ‘precise’ estimates (i. e. lightly higher t statistics). 20 One example of the special features that very small countries have is the more limited extent of ethnoguistic fractionalization and the fact that they tend to be more open to trade (e. g. Knack and Azfar 2003). Since small countries are included in corruption surveys only when they are more interesting for investors, the over-representation of small countries with good in vestment climate and low corruption levels could easily introduce in the sample a spurious correlation between corruption, openness (negative) and ethnolinguistic fractionalization (positive). 1 Being a former-British colony should affect the degree of corruption because of the lasting effect British occupation has on the organization of the civil service. The UK has that same civil service organization and this is the reason for including the UK together with its former colonies in the dummy. 254 L. Pellegrini, R. Gerlagh measure based on the percentage of fuels, metals, and minerals in exports. These variables are predetermined by the history of the country or by natural characteristics and can be considered ? xed over long time scales. The dependent variable is the corruption index from the World Bank for the year 2004. The results are reported in Table 1. In regression (1), we ? nd results that throw some doubt on many conventional ? ndings. Speci? cally, while as in most previous analysis we do ? nd a strong correlation with some of the country ? xed factors, we ? nd that neither the existence of a common law system or having been a British colony are aspects associated with a country’s corruption levels. This result challenges the hypothesis that having adopted the British law system or having a past as a British colony reduces corruption at present day (e. . Treisman 2000; Glaeser and Shleifer 2002). When we compare Treisman’s work, where he found a British colonial past to be an important determinant of present levels of perceived corruption, with the model and variables used in this study, we ? nd that our dataset is largely expanded (there are up to 107 countries in our regressions, almost doub le the number of countries in the largest dataset from Treisman) and that the index of corruption we are using has a lower standard error associated with it. 22 We ascribe our ? ding to the fact that our dataset includes countries that were not included in previous studies, are former British colonies, and are also perceived to be very corrupt. 23 As a British colonial past tends to overlap with the Common law system,24 collinearity is a risk in considering these highly correlated variables, and we also include them separately in the regressions. 25 We still ? nd the two variables to be individually non-signi? cant. In our analysis, one factor that signi? cantly affects the level of corruption in all regressions with suf? iently large sample size is the percentage of Protestants in the population, which is negatively associated with the level of perceived corruption. This ? nding relates to the theories of culture and the work of those (Weber and Landes 1999 among others) that sugge st that religion is a fundamental character shaping culture. The in? uence of the presence of Protestants over corruption is con? rmed over the different speci? cations and is always statistically very signi? cant. It must be noted that, from regression (2) to (9), the introduction of other independent variables more than halves the coef? ient of Protestant religion prevalence. The conversion of 20% of the population from a non-protestant religion to the protestant religion (a one standard deviation 22 For a thorough comparison of the corruption perception index from Transparency International and the one from the World Bank, see Kaufmann et al. 2005. 23 Our dataset includes former British colonies such as Myanmar and Sudan, which rank among the countries where corruption is perceived to be the highest in the world. Data on these countries has only recently become available. 4 The list of countries, in our dataset, that experienced British control, but did not adopt the British lega l system are: Egypt, Iraq, Jordan, Kuwait, Myanmar, Mauritius, and Oman. Countries, included in the dataset, that adopted the British legal system without being colonies are: United Arab Emirates, Liberia, Namibia, Saudi Arabia, Somalia, and Thailand. 25 We also computed the variance in? ator factors, for both variables, which were well below the conventional level of 10. Causes of corruption Table 1 Regressions results (3) (4) (5) (6) (7) (8) (9) (1) (2) ?0. 85 (0. 30) 0. 3(0. 23) ? 0. 45(0. 51) ? 1. 07 (0. 13) ? 0. 08(0. 27) 0. 03(0. 29) ? 0. 37 ? ?(0. 17) ? 0. 35 ? ?(0. 17) ? 0. 12 (0. 05) ? 0. 71 (0. 08) ? 0. 64 (0. 08) 0. 41 ? (0. 23) 0. 40 ? (0. 21) 0. 40 ? (0. 22) ? 0. 55 (0. 09) ?1. 10 (0. 25) ? 0. 11(0. 21) ?0. 91 (0. 24) ? 0. 13(0. 21) ?0. 73 (0. 25) ? 0. 18(0. 20) ?0. 60 ? (0. 31) ? 0. 16(0. 21) 0. 44 ? (0. 22) ? 0. 53 (0. 09) ?0. 82 ? ?(0. 37) 0. 08(0. 22) 0. 52 ? (0. 29) ? 0. 67 (0. 11) ?0. 39 ? ?(0. 18) ? 0. 15 ? ?(0. 07) 0. 03(0. 08) 1. 29 (0. 43) ?0. 34 ? (0. 19) ? 0 . 08(0. 10) Common law ? 0. 13(0. 2) British colony ? 0. 15(0. 28) Protestants ? 2. 06 (0. 35) ? 2. 21 (0. 34) ? 1. 10 (0. 25) Ethnolinguistic 1. 53 (0. 30) 1. 36 (0. 22) ? 0. 13(0. 21) fractionalization Fuels and minerals 0. 82 (0. 26) 0. 85 (0. 23) 0. 41 ? ?(0. 21) Imports ? 0. 60(0. 47) Income ? 0. 72 (0. 06) Decentralization Contemporary democracy 30 Years of uninterrupted democracy Newspaper circulation Government intervention Political instability Government wage 0. 41 0. 44 0. 77 R2 Number of cases 106 107 106 0. 89 42 0. 78 104 0. 79 106 0. 80 104 0. 81 103 1. 66 (0. 45) ? 0. 04(0. 03) 0. 85 72 WLS estimation with the Corruption Perception as dependent variable and the reciprocal of errors’ estimates as weights. The constants are included in the regressions, but the coef? cients are omitted in the table. Robust standard errors, are in parenthesis under the coef? cients. The variance in? ation factor is lower than 10 for every variable (indicating that collinerity is not a major problem) *, **, ***Correspond to a 10, 5, 1% of signi? cance, respectively 255 256 L. Pellegrini, R. Gerlagh change) would be associated with a reduction in the corruption index by 0. 2 points on an approximate 0–4 scale, that is one ? th of a standard deviation. Associating the prevalence of fuels and minerals with corruption is not a new concept. In an in? uential paper, Leite and Weidmann (1999) found that corruption levels are statistically associated with natural resources and provide a rent-seeking explanation. When compared to their analysis, our substantially expanded dataset st ill ? nds the same association, though the relation is not as strong as in their results. Thus, in our model, a change of 25% in the value of natural resources on exports (i. e. a one standard deviation change) would be associated with a change of 0. 0 points in our corruption perception index. In regression (2) we include, as a proxy for openness, the share of imports in GDP averaged over of a period of 10 years. We ? nd it not to be a signi? cant predictor of the corruption index. This result differs from Treisman who found imports over GDP to be associated with a decrease of the corruption index, but it corresponds with the results from Knack and Azfar (2003) who have disputed the link between trade intensity and corruption. The difference between results can be ascribed to the propensity of smaller datasets to be affected by selection bias. That is, earlier and less comprehensive surveys tended to include small economies only when they were of interest for international investors who are the main source of funding for the surveys. The selection thus favored small countries that were open and not very corrupt. The inclusion of income as an independent variable in Regression (3), causes some major changes in all coef? cients. 26 Most notably, the ethnic division proxy becomes insigni? cant (and remains insigni? cant after the inclusion of other explanatory variables). It appears that ethnic diversity is not correlated per se with corruption, but through lower income levels or through other variables correlated to income, such as schooling. A similar effect occurs for the coef? cients of the Protestants variable and of natural resources in exports, though these coef? cients remain signi? cant. 27 At the same time, we must emphasize that the inclusion of income as a independent variable runs the risk of creating an endogeneity problem: since corruption, and institutions in general, have been found to affect the growth rate of income, and since institutional quality tends to be stable over time, it is ossible that corruption determines income levels rather than the other way around. 28 A possible strategy for tackling the issue of endogenity is the use of 26 The income variable refers to 2001. 27 Indeed, for natural resources there is a large literature on the ‘resource curse’ and the ‘Dutch disease’, which have shown the de trimental effect that natural resources have on economic growth (Stevens 2003). 28 On the direction of causality between institutions and income there is a large and growing empirical literature. Most of the authors seem to agree that causality runs from institutions to income, rather than the other way around (e. . Rodrik et al. 2004; Acemoglu et al. 2001). For an example of an econometric study ? nding the opposite direction in the causality between growth and institutions, see Chong and Calderon 2000. Causes of corruption 257 instrumental variables. We identify latitude as a good instrumental variable29 (it is correlated with income at 60% and we ? nd no ways through which it could directly affect corruption). Latitude has been suggested as a determinant of income by the proponent of theories of geography as a determinant of economic development (e. g. Sachs 2001). Once latitude is inserted among the independent variables, acting as an instrument for income, the coef? cients of the other independent variables tend to increase in magnitude and to become more statistically signi? cant (not shown in this paper). Most notably, the variables describing democracy, newspapers circulation and political instability (see below) increase their coef? cients. But, equally important, we do not ? nd any of the variables that we found not to be signi? cant in the main analysis to become signi? cant when using the instrument. 0,31 While the income endogeneity issue can be taken care of via the use of instrumental variables, we prefer an alternative solution, using a lagged income variable. The reason is that we are not so much interested in the coef? cient of income itself, which can be biased due to endogeneity, but we are more interested in the use of income as a control variable. Our aim is to ? lter out that part of the coef? cients for other independent va riables that may go through income. We thus use income to improve the robustness of our estimates. Summing up, choosing to present results from the WLS regressions we favor type I errors, but the difference with the results with the instrumental variables would not alter substantially our conclusions. One of the main ? ndings of Treisman (2000) that contradicts existing literature (e. g. Fisman and Gatti 2002) is the trend for federalism to increase corruption. We use as a proxy of power decentralization the share of expenses that are delegated to local authorities as compared to the central government. 32 Once we include such a proxy in our regressions, we do not ? d that decentralization has a positive correlation with corruption. On the contrary, we ? nd the proxy for decentralization to have a negative correlation with corruption, though the coef? cient is not statistically signi? cant. We interpret this result as a 29 A good instrumental variable must be highly correlated with the variable to be instrumented and should not have additional explanatory power. 30 The only except ion is contemporary democracy that becomes signi? cant. In the analysis below, we prefer to use and discuss the measure of medium-term persistence of democracy, because it is signi? ant even with the inclusion of income. In any case, the null hypothesis of exogeneity is not rejected by the Hausman test. 31 A note of caution is needed when we analyze the results with the instrumental variable, because theories that link geographical factors to institutions and through them to income levels have been developed (Hall and Jones 1999; Acemoglu et al. 2001). If these theories are correct, latitude could be used as an instrumental variable for corruption as well, and the interpretation of the 2-stage results would become problematic. For our own dataset, we checked whether latitude could be used as an instrument for corruption in a regression on income and found that latitude would not be a valid instrument, because it retained explanatory power when added to corruption in the regression. 32 Unfortunately, our proxy for decentralization is available just for a small sample of countries. Once more statistics on government ? nance, uniform across countries, are available a more reliable empirical test of the link between decentralization and corruption will be possible. 258 L. Pellegrini, R. Gerlagh weak suggestion that federalism does not increase corruption. 3 One reason for the difference between our ? ndings and Treisman (2000) ? nding can lay in the fact that Treisman uses a dummy variable to characterize a state as federalist or centralist based on an incomplete list of federal countries in Elazar 1995. Apart from its incompleteness, another problem of this list is that an of? cially federalist country may in fact be overly centralized, where Mexico is a case in point. 34 The evidence is less than conclusive, as it is based on a sample of only 42 countries, but deserves to be mentioned as a matter that merits further inquiry (see also Arikan 2004). In the remaining regressions, the decentralization proxy is omitted in order to keep a larger sample of countries. The inclusion of a contemporary democracy variable in regression (4) does not produce a signi? cant coef? cient. This result is different when compared to most of the literature that speci? cally tests the democracy hypothesis. We conjecture that the reason for this is that most other models work with less control variables (e. g. Hill 2003; Chowdhury 2004) or with smaller samples (Sandholtz et al. 2000) leading to omitted variable bias. In the table, we introduced a proxy for democracy from the Polity IV dataset (measuring democratic levels of institutions as judged by a panel of experts, averaged over the period 1994–2003). As an alternative (not reported in the Table), we used a proxy from the Polyarchy dataset (measuring participation and competition at the elections through a mathematical interpretation of elections results, also for the period 1994–2003). None of the two democracy’s proxies seem to affect the corruption level, but only when we exclude the income variable. Thus, it is possible that there is an indirect effect of democracy levels through income on corruption (see Barro 1996; and the literature that has sprung from his work). Constructing a dummy variable for stable democracies35 (where there are no coups, or other major interruptions of the nature of the government, and the country has democratic institutions in terms both of elections and of administration of power), we ? nd that a long exposition to democracy has a mitigating effect on corruption. Thus, a ‘30 years of uninterrupted democracy’ variable [as reported in regression (6)] is signi? ant at 5%. The absolute size and the statistical signi? cance of the coef? cient increases if more decades are included in the dummy. A dummy characterizing countries that experienced 50 years of uninterrupted democracy is signi? cant at 1%. Our ? nding thereby presents 33 To be sure, we also included, as a proxy of the size of the country, the natural logarithm of the population (as in Fisman and Gatti 2002), to account for the fact that countries with different size may have different ‘natural’ centralization levels. Conform with previous literature, we did not ? nd the variable to be signi? cant or to affect the coef? cient of the decentralization variable. 34 In the United States of Mexico, central government spending exceeds the States and the local governments spending together by more than three times. While the Mexican constitution is of federal nature, political power is centralised in the country’s capital. ‘For most of the seven decades of rule by the Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI), Mexico was a highly centralised one-party polity. State governors, and even many mayors, were named by the president and answered to him, even if they were duly elected, by fraud if need be’, see ‘Mexico’s truncated moves towards real federalism’, March 27th 2003, From The Economist print edition. 35 We set the cut off point at the level of seven on a 0–10 scale of democracy in the Polity IV variable. Causes of corruption 259 an intermediate position where it is not contemporary levels of democracy that are signi? cant predictor of corruption (e. g. Chowdhury 2004), but it is also unnecessary to have 45 years of uninterrupted democracy as in Treisman (2000). According to our estimates, more than 10, but less then 45 years of a persistently democratic regime is suf? cient to produce a signi? cant dividend in terms of corruption reduction. An issue related to democracy that attracted some attention recently is the role of press. We include the variable of newspapers circulation in order to catch the possible effect of that the mass medias can play in reducing corruption. Our empirical ? nding [regression (7)] supports the hypothesis that countries where access to press is more wide spread will have less corruption. 6 There are ? nally the theories related to government policies. Thus, we have included in regressions (8) and (9) an index of government intervention in the economy, a proxy of political instability, and a measure of wages in the public sector. The proxy for government intervention in the economy is computed using government consumption as a percentage of the economy, government ownership of businesses and industries, the share of government revenues from state-owned enterprises, and government ownership of property and economic output produced by the government. While we do not ? nd support for the hypothesis that government intervention is associated with corruption, we are cautious as to its interpretation, because an increase in government activities in the economy can refer to both restrictions that provide more opportunities for rents’ appropriation, but it can also refer to higher expenditures in education and health, or in public goods in general. These in turn could be channels through which corruption is diminished. The political instability is obtained averaging the number of â€Å"veto players† changes in the political system in each year. The variable we employ is a proxy of political instability that recognizing the diffuse nature of political power in most countries. It computes the total number of veto players in the political structure and then evaluates the number of them that have changed in a year. The results show that political instability seems to be signi? cantly associated with corruption, thus the shortening of the time horizons of politicians would affect corruption levels. While evidence of this relation is tentative and would deserve further testing, we highlight that this result is mostly due to the increase in sample size and the use of a better proxy for political instability as compared to Treisman’s work. 37 Finally, we add government wage as an independent variable. We add this government-related variable last, because of the fact that the variable is available only for a reduced sample (72 countries). The government wage is obtained 36 We also checked whether the interaction term between contemporary democracy and newspapers circulation would be igni? cant, controlling whether a free press together with a democratic regime would have a special effect on corruption levels. In our regressions the interaction term was not signi? cant. 37 Treisman employed a variable that simply stated the number of government leaders changes in each year. 260 L. Pellegrini, R. Gerlagh by dividing the average wage in the public sector by GDP per capita. The government wage variable has the predicted negative sign, but is signi? cant only at 12%. Since the sample is relatively small, it is possible that with more data on government salaries and a better proxy for the opportunity costs faced by civil servants if they loose their jobs it would be possible to get a signi? cant coef? cient. 38 As a robustness check of our ? ndings, we have run ordinary least squares regressions with identical speci? cations, only with the Transparency International’s corruption perception index for 2004 as a dependent variable. 39 We ? nd similar results, but with a slightly smaller dataset and decreased signi? ance of most coef? cients. 40 There are two differences in the estimates. First, the share of fuels and minerals in exports tends to become statistically insigni? cant in most regressions, and second, the import share in GDP is signi? cant when income is excluded as an independent variable. Subsequently, we used the corruption perception index of the World Bank for the years 1996, 1998, 2000, and 2002 instead of 2004 as a dependent variable to check our results, with the independent variables also referring to earlier years than in our main analysis. Again, results are similar with two exceptions. Fuels and minerals in exports tend to be slightly more signi? cant in some regressions, and newspapers circulation tends to be slightly less signi? cant in some (other) regressions. 5 Discussion and conclusions Our exercise contributes to the existing literature as it questions some central ? ndings of previous econometric studies. Most notably, for some historical characteristics of a country that have been said to be a cause of corruption, we do not ? nd support. In our statistical analysis we do not ? d that the common law system or a past as a British colony (negatively) predict corruption. Furthermore, we do not ? nd any association between decentralization and corruption. Moreover, the link between ethnolinguistic fractionalization and corruption is diminished and becomes insigni? cant once income is included in the regressions. We do ? nd systematic evidence that supports cultural theories of the causes of corruption, in that the presence of Protestants in the population is found to be associated with lower corruption. We also ? nd that richer countries are less corrupt. As mentioned above, caution is needed as there could be reverse causality from institutional quality to income, though the result is upheld using an 38 A better proxy would be the ratio of civil servants pay to service or manufacturing salaries (that are not in? uenced by the share of population employed in the agricultural sector). Van Rijckeghem and Weder (2001) use the ratio of government wages to manufacturing wages and ? nd it to be a signi? cant determinant of corruption levels. Their data sample, though, is limited to 31 countries and data limitations do not allow us to follow their data. 9 The estimates if Transparency International’s margins of error have been shown to be biased (Kaufmann et al. 2005), therefore we preferred the ordinary least squares, as a regression technique, rather than the weighted least squares technique. 40 The sample size ranges between 98 and 67 countries. Causes of corruption 261 instrumental variable. Another ? nding shows that a long expos ure (30 years) to uninterrupted democracy is associated with lower corruption, that political instability tends to raise corruption, and that the diffusion of newspapers is associated with lower corruption levels. Finally, we also ? d some evidence of an association of higher wages in the public sector with lower corruption. What distinguishes our study from previous econometric works is, apart for some different variable choices, a larger sample and we suggest that the most notable differences with earlier studies can be traced to the inclusion of new countries in the present study. We are aware of the limitations on the interpretation of econometric results. Econometrics has a bias towards theories that can easily be quanti? ed. Case studies and more theoretical studies can act as a necessary complement of this type of work (e. g. Johnston 2005). For future research, we hope to follow two approaches. First, we want to investigate determinants of corruption that are amenable to policy changes. This search can be enhanced through the use of econometric analyses that identify the sources of corruption at the micro level (e. g. Fisman and Miguel 2006; Miller 2006; Reinikka and Svensson 2006). Second, we consider another relevant challenge to be the collection of suf? cient data for a panel data approach over a number of decades. The combined cross-country- or cross-region- and intertemporal analyses possible with panel data can be a key to ? ding other sources of corruption. Acknowledgments The research has been funded by the Dutch National Science Foundation (NWO) under contract no. 016. 005. 040. Appendix Table 2 Descriptive statistics Variables Corruption Protestants Ethnolinguistic fractionalization Fuels and minerals Imports Income [ln(GDP) per capita] Decentralization Contemporary democracy Newspapers circul ation Government intervention Instability Government wage Obs 106 106 106 106 105 106 42 104 104 106 105 73 Mean 0. 00 0. 13 0. 33 0. 20 0. 39 8. 38 0. 33 0. 72 1. 10 2. 94 0. 14 3. 25 Std. Dev. 1. 07 0. 21 0. 30 0. 6 0. 20 1. 19 0. 28 0. 29 1. 48 0. 75 0. 10 2. 47 Min ? 2. 47 0. 00 0. 00 0. 00 0. 09 6. 20 0. 02 0. 05 0. 00 1. 50 0. 00 0. 60 Max 1. 55 0. 98 0. 89 0. 97 1. 34 10. 39 1. 33 1. 00 7. 60 4. 70 0. 41 11. 80 Corruption is the perceived corruption index 2004, from the World Bank (see Kaufmann et al. 2005); Protestants is the share of Protestants in the population, Ethnolinguistic fractionalization is a average of ? ve different indexes based on linguistic groups (for the last two variables see La Porta et al. 1999); Fuels and minerals equals to the share of fuels and minerals on exports, 62 L. Pellegrini, R. Gerlagh averaged over 1993–2002, Income in the natural logarithm of GDP per capita in 2001, (the last two variables are from the World Development Indicators 200 4); Decentralization is the expenses of state and local government divided by the central government averaged over 1993–2002 (from the ‘Government Finance Statistics 2004’ of the International Monetary Fund); Contemporary Democracy is the average of the institutional democracy score for the years 1994–2003 from the Polity IV dataset (see Jaggers et al. ; Newspapers Circulation is daily newspapers circulation for 10 people; Imports is a measure of the openness of the economy and equals to the share of imports over GDP, averaged over 1993–2002 (the last two variables are from the World Development Indicators 2004); Government Intervention is an index for 2004 of the in? ence of government on the economy based on government consumption as a percentage of the economy, government ownership of businesses and industries, the share of government revenues from state-owned enterprises, and government ownership of property and economic output produced by the g overnment (from The Index of Economic Freedom 2005); Instability is the percentage of veto players that changed every year, averaged for 1991–2000 (see Beck et al. 000); Government Wage is the average government wage as a multiple of GDP per capita (from Schiavo-Campo 1998); British Colony is the dummy variable for countries that have been under British control (from Treisman 2000 augmented with information from Flags of the World Website http://? agspot. net/? ags/gbcolon. html); Common Law is the dummy variable for countries that adopted the common law system in their commerical code (from La Porta et al. 1999). 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