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This article responds to a comment on a previous article that argued critics of capitalism often confuse it with cronyism. The response addresses the assumptions made in the comment and highlights the complexities of government policy reflecting society's will. It also discusses the relationship between cronyism and capitalism, emphasizing that cronyism depends on the state's level of involvement in the economy. The article concludes by acknowledging the different perspectives on capitalism and cronyism and the need for further research on these topics. The text also discusses the potential for cronyism in government institutions and the relationship between cronyism and capitalism. It argues that firms' dependence on government increases the potential for cronyism, and that special interests often shape public policy to their own preferences. The text also addresses the assumption that government policy reflects society's will and explores the distinctions between cronyism and capitalism. It concludes by discussing the size and scope of the state and the challenges of government intervention in the private sector. Overall, the text highlights the need for further research on the antecedents of government policy and the potential consequences of government intervention. The text also discusses the topic of cronyism and its impact on government policy and effectiveness. It suggests methods such as citizen assemblies and shareholder resolutions to address cronyism and emphasizes the importance of understanding managers' value systems and their influence on decision-making. The text calls for more research on government effectiveness and the role of institutions in shaping public policy. It concludes by stating that management research on cr [Extracted from the article]

When people want to conduct a transaction, but doing so would be morally disreputable, they can obfuscate the fact that they are engaging in an exchange while still arranging for a set of transfers that are effectively equivalent to an exchange. Obfuscation through structures such as gift-giving and brokerage is pervasive across a wide range of disreputable exchanges, such as bribery and sex work. In this article, we develop a theoretical account that sheds light on when actors are more versus less likely to obfuscate. Specifically, we report a series of experiments addressing the effect of trust on the decision to engage in obfuscated disreputable exchange. We find that actors obfuscate more often with exchange partners high in loyalty-based trustworthiness, with expected reciprocity and moral discomfort mediating this effect. However, the effect is highly contingent on the type of trust; trust facilitates obfuscation when it is loyalty-based, but this effect flips when trust is ethics-based. Our findings not only offer insights into the important role of relational context in shaping moral understandings and choices about disreputable exchange, but they also contribute to scholarship on trust by demonstrating that distinct forms of trust can have diametrically opposed effects.

The UK Bribery Act (2010) and its failure to prevent the (FtP) model represent a novel approach to corporate accountability. This approach is gaining traction in other issue areas and jurisdictions as a mechanism to incentivise robust corporate compliance policies. Australia now has a comparable offence of Failure to Prevent Foreign Bribery and the model has also been applied to tax evasion and fraud in the UK. As such, the FtP model is developing into an important feature of the corporate accountability landscape. There have been suggestions that the FtP model should be expanded to address social and environmental harms resulting from transnational business practices and corporate liability for failure to prevent corruption is even being considered under international law, as part of an the effort to establish an International Anti-Corruption Court with jurisdiction over individuals and corporations. However, there remains limited empirical research documenting the actual impact of the FtP Bribery on corporate behaviour. This article remedies this gap in scholarship, providing novel insights by analysing for the first time the impact of the FtP bribery offence on publicly available annual reports. It establishes a foundation for further empirical research on the impact of the FtP model beyond reporting, to corporate practices and decision-making. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study, utilising data from the World Bank Enterprise Survey, probes the diverse effects of bribery on the growth of firms in India. The central question we ask is: what motivates certain firms to engage in bribery while others abstain? Employing the endogenous switching regression model, we aim to uncover the intricacies of this heterogeneity. Our findings suggest that bribery can facilitate growth, yet there is substantial heterogeneity in its impact on firms. The impact varies across firm groups: it positively influences those engaging in bribery, while non-bribers would have experienced adverse effects if they had engaged in bribery. Thus, we observe that firms' decision to dis(engage) in bribery is influenced by the returns they derive from such a decision. This suggests that firms' decision to (dis)engage in bribery is a conscious, strategic and rational one, driven by choice rather than coercion. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Does the perception of corruption shape the willingness to bribe? This study evaluates the socio-psychological determinants of corruption by measuring how different types of messages influence the probability of engaging in corruption for access to public health, social programs, and official documents. This research uses the social norms approach to explore the link among messaging, perception, and behavior. An online experiment was conducted in Peru for two weeks between October and November 2021, using social media (Facebook) to recruit participants (n  = 2584). The participants were divided into two treatment groups and one control group. Those in the treatment groups received informational displays on (i) the perception of corruption as widespread in the public sector (descriptive norm) or (ii) corruption as morally wrong (injunctive norm). The control group did not receive a message. Exposure to messages on corruption increased the overall probability of engaging in corruption. Unexpectedly, those in the injunctive norm group increased their willingness to bribe. Furthermore, this study also found significant differences in bribing behavior based on the different types of public service, gender, and age. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article examines the interplay between corruption, personality traits and political trust. It argues that individuals' personality traits may condition the effect of corruption experience on trust and that these traits also affect how individuals are exposed to corrupt experiences. Using data from the AmericasBarometer 2010, the study finds that openness, conscientiousness, agreeableness and emotional stability amplify the negative effect of corruption on trust in the police. However, only extraversion amplifies the negative effect of corrupt experiences on trust in government. The study also finds that openness, extraversion, agreeableness and emotional stability are linked to exposure to corruption. The study contributes to the literature by showing that personality affects exposure to corruption and constrains the effect of corruption on political trust. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Right now, Ukraine is in an aspect for different areas of the legal environment. Therefore, it is appropriate to find different directions of models for fighting corruption in its history. Redirecting to the legal historical period in Ukraine and the former USSR, it is appropriate to allocate just a few such fundamental directions. This model of combating corruption is addressed on the border of the state by the behavior of individuals and response to deviations from the legal regulation that they provide. This particular model is aimed at the era of «Stalinism». It is precisely to overcome the fight against the direction of corruption during the study of the educational normative discipline «Civil Process» that the rights of the individual are greatly violated, because the totalitarianism addressed is incompatible with their emergence. Therefore, such an expediency of addressing also has positive directions: it is addressed to the study of the educational normative discipline «Civil Process», the appropriate interaction between the degree of authority of a person and the degree of aspectism. The expediency of being brought to administrative responsibility and incurring - increases for individuals who are closest to the top of power during the study of the educational normative discipline «Civil Process» - the closer to the top, the greater the risk. That is, addressing the principle of implementation of superficial responsibility: «top-down», which is a very necessary means of implementing social justice in general. The study of the educational regulatory discipline «Civil Process» also expediently provides a model of combating corruption - the implementation of strong personal responsibility, according to the directions of the «leading person». At this time, the expediency of such persons was foreseen by the party elites. This model provided a basis during the times of Khrushchev and Brezhnev. It is also necessary to mention two more features when studying the educational regulatory discipline «Civil Process», inherent in the model: firstly, the addressing of the individual to the appropriate level of his authority involves a normative and legal aspect, secondly, money in this model has a secondary role or do not have a conceptual apparatus. The study of the educational regulatory discipline «Civil Process» has a model of combating corruption, ensures the desire to force people into power structures on the basis of personal safety and irresponsibility; therefore, it contains the main aspects of public authority and its addressed bribery of the person as a whole. The educational normative discipline «Civil process» in the conditions of the military model of fighting corruption has complete impunity and impossibility. Such aspects are foreseen in periods of rich revolutionary legal aspects, when the newly created state has not yet received the functions of leadership management or consciously foresees destructive directions. Normativeness of the existence of this model is precisely the time of the administration of the Provisional Government, it is also expedient to refrain from reforms in education as a whole. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Politically connected firms critically rely on their sociopolitical capital to compete; however, a policy-induced loss of board political connections may pose a serious challenge for focal firms and prompt them to develop compensatory moves. Drawing upon resource dependence theory and the nonmarket strategy literature, we examine if and how focal firms may address this challenge through intensifying their bribery activities. Following a year 2013 policy shock that closed the revolving door between former government officials and connected firms in China, we identify a substantial increase of bribery expenditure in a sample of public corporations whose political independent directors were forced by the central government to resign in the subsequent years. Furthermore, we investigate how the strength of this response varies with a host of firm-level contingencies that capture dependence scope and dependence asymmetry in the business-government dyad at the time of the policy announcement. Our study contributes to strategy and governance literatures by demonstrating how firms restructure power relationships after the loss of board political capital. It also sheds light on the regulation of revolving doors under weak institutions by revealing the irony of a well-intentioned "anticorruption" government policy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

• This paper empirically examines the effects of two distinct innovation strategies. • Independent innovation sands firm performance; spillover innovation greases it. • Greasing effect of spillover innovation is amplified by bribing. • Greasing effect of spillover innovation is amplified under poor institution. • Sanding effect of independent innovation is reduced under good institution. While a large body of literature has explored the impacts of bribery on firm performance, particularly in terms of innovation outcomes, a significant gap exists in understanding the effects of innovation strategies on firms' performance as well as the influence of institutional quality on the interaction between innovation strategies and bribery. This paper empirically addresses this gap by investigating the complex effects of bribing and two distinct innovation strategies—independent innovation and spillover innovation. Using global firm-level evidence from the latest Business Environment and Enterprise Performance Survey, we employ three semiparametric methods to estimate productivity as proxy of firms' performance. Our results show that independent innovation exerts sanding influences on productivity, while spillover innovation and bribery grease the wheels of firm performance. Moreover, bribery and spillover innovation mutually amplify each other's positive effects on firm performance. Further examinations indicate that the impacts of innovation strategies and bribing are significantly moderated by institutional quality. Under poor institutional quality with excessive government control or corruption, the positive influence of spillover innovation and bribing tends to be strengthened. Conversely, good institutional quality mitigates the greasing effects of spillover innovation and bribery. Through multiple robustness tests employing alternative methodologies, firm performance metrics, and institutional quality measures, these findings are consistently confirmed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper studies the moral dilemma of bribery in the presence of official discretion. The moral dilemma is framed as a dynamic choice problem in which an official's present biased temptation preferences that value bribery conflict with commitment preferences that place more value on honesty. The tension between temptation and commitment becomes salient in the presence of the official's discretionary power. More discretion allows the official to lower red-tape which is socially beneficial, but it also makes bribery more tempting thereby making commitment to honesty more costly. Accordingly, a morally committed bureaucrat may choose less discretion (which generates more red-tape) as a remedy to avoid being tempted by bribery. Whereas, the welfare maximizing policy will often impose high discretion, which generates psychic temptation costs on honest officials. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The integrity of electronic voting systems is critical in safeguarding the democratic process worldwide. This study addresses the twin challenges of bribery and coercion that undermine most existing electronic voting systems. Recognizing the limitations of current security measures, which fail to protect voter autonomy even after the disclosure of voting secrets, we propose an innovative level-five secure e-voting system. By integrating an additional setup phase, our system maintains voter volition, ensuring security even when key secrets are compromised. Utilizing cryptographic techniques, blind signatures, and subliminal channels in conjunction with smart card PIN mechanisms, our approach not only bolsters system security but also enhances its potential for widespread adoption. This work underscores the importance of advanced cryptographic methods in developing coercion-resistant electronic voting systems that prioritize voter privacy and choice. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Corruption is a political and economic issue that has a detrimental impact on social and economic development. This study investigated the predictive effect of dispositional awe on corruption, and the underlying mechanisms from the perspective of connectedness. A sample of 548 (Nfemale = 371) individuals, aged between 16 and 71 years old (M = 21.18, SD = 3.39), was collected. Participants completed scales to measure dispositional awe, the sense of connectedness, corruption, and social desirability. Structural equation modelling and a bootstrap procedure were used to analyze the relationship between the variables. Results showed that dispositional awe negatively predicted corruption, including the tendencies for giving and accepting bribes, and this could be explained by the sense of connectedness, after controlling for the effect of social desirability. The findings highlight the significance of dispositional awe in relation to corruption, enhance our understanding of the underlying mechanisms connecting the two variables, and provide practical implications for the prevention of corruption. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Community-oriented policing has been a mainstay of policing over the past quarter century. In March 2019, the municipality of Coatepeque in Guatemala, with the assistance of Research Triangle Institute (RTI) International, implemented a new community policing plan called Vivir y Prosperar in the Meta Mercado. Vivir y Prosperar was designed to improve security, reduce crime, and promote economic prosperity. This study utilises the pre-test, baseline and 6-months post-test, endline survey data of market vendors in the Meta Mercado to assess whether Vivir y Prosperar reduced fear of crime and increased someone's willingness to report crime to police as tenets of community policing would anticipate. Results show that Vivir and Prosperar did not directly contribute to a decrease in fear of crime or improve one's willingness to report crimes to the police. However, improving personal victimisation experiences, bribery payments, and other factors may indirectly promote a reduction in fear of crime and increase the willingness to report a crime among market vendors. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The global petroleum industry has been much maligned over the past 10–15 years for its involvement in foreign corrupt activities due to well-publicized instances of US-led prosecution for bribery of foreign public officials. Among the high-profile cases include the infamous Technip, Snamprogetti, Kellogg Brown & Root, JGC (TSKJ) conspiracy bribing Nigerian officials of the Bonny Island LNG terminal to the far-reaching Odebrecht/Petrobras Brazilian Lava Jato and more recent global Unaoil bribery scandals. What these cases and others have in common is the incidence of 'multi-jurisdictional' prosecution for foreign bribery rather than simply prosecution by US authorities as occurred prior to 2005. Through detailed quantitative analysis, we show how this multi-jurisdictional enforcement is a petroleum industry trend. The financial and reputational risk in terms of both likelihood and impact of a foreign bribery event has increased dramatically over the past 10 years. Despite this increased risk, we found little evidence of a risk-based compliance approach among industry participants. We show that the current practice of limiting liability is not an efficient risk-based approach towards corruption compliance and is not likely to meet new anti-corruption compliance guidelines by international regulators. Our research examines a possible cause-and-effect model behind this heightened corruption risk. We profile and describe the nature of the top 10 petroleum industry multi-jurisdictional bribery cases. We then provide a display of a corruption event's drivers, consequences, and barriers in the form of a risk-based 'bow-tie' diagram. Finally, we recommend ways the industry can move towards a more risk-based corruption compliance approach. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper introduces a model where a briber designs a bribing schedule targeted at the governing party within a bipartisan system to secure favorable treatment. Detected corruption increases voters' resentment, and in turn, the risk of political turnover—raising the minimum acceptable bribe. Periods without corruption mitigate such a risk. Should the briber deem bribing unprofitable for sufficiently high levels of resentment, resentment converges to a steady state in finite time. Conversely, if the briber perceives bribing as profitable regardless of the resentment level, the dynamics may result in continuous bribing and an unbounded increase in resentment (exploding dynamics). The model underscores the complexity of addressing corruption, emphasizing the need to balance reducing corruption with preventing excessive political instability. Societal forgiveness and sensitivity significantly shape corruption dynamics and public resentment. While forgiveness reduces long‐run resentment, it concurrently exacerbates long‐term corruption and, on balance, may have a detrimental effect on long‐term welfare. Sensitivity has no long‐run effect on resentment, while it reduces both corruption activity and political instability in the long term. Finally, exogenous political instability exacerbates corruption, resentment, and the risk of exploding dynamics. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Paying bribes to access public services is a common form of corruption faced by citizens worldwide. A standard policy recommendation to address this problem is to create secure channels and encourage citizens to report bribery to authorities. Bribery reporting tools aim to decrease the incidence of bribery, but they could also serve to bolster anti-corruption commitment. Can bribery reporting channels also inspire citizens to fight corruption? This paper tests the claim that institutional responsiveness to bribery reporting triggers a positive feedback mechanism. The positive feedback mechanism refers to the proposition that advertising successful cases of institutional responsiveness not only persuades citizens of institutional commitment to fighting corruption but also inspires them to uptake various anti-corruption activities. The empirical strategy relies on Afrobarometer survey data from 12 countries, specifically focusing on individuals reporting bribery incidents who also answer a survey question about the subsequent actions taken by authorities. The paper assesses the persuasion effect by examining whether institutional responsiveness correlates with more positive perceptions of public institutions. Additionally, the paper assesses the inspiration effect by investigating whether this responsiveness is associated with citizens' willingness to take part in anti-corruption activities. The findings show that, even though those who have observed responsiveness to bribery reporting tend to evaluate public institutions more positively, they do not seem more willing to engage against corruption than those who do not observe responsiveness. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The past decade witnessed a surge in anti-corruption activities in post-Soviet oil-dependent countries. Despite the scale of the anti-corruption measures, and their political implications, the extant literature paid limited attention to the comparison of these campaigns, including differences in their motivations, functions, objectives, and targets. Aiming to fill this research gap, this study employs a mixed-methods research design that combines fixed-effects panel data analysis with a paired-case qualitative analysis of Russia and Kazakhstan. I argue that anti-corruption policies are the result of either economic necessity or the desire to secure power through buttressing regime legitimacy. Consequently, a significant drop in oil price due to the COVID-19 crisis is likely to result in a major anti-corruption campaign targeting high-level officials in oil-rich countries. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The bulk of scholarship on police intervention in enforcing COVID-19 pandemic-imposed restrictions focuses on police misconduct, securitisation, human rights, police preparedness, and legitimacy, but empirical research on police corruption during the restriction in Nigeria is sparse despite reports of pervasive police extortion and bribery. Thus, this study fills the academic gap by examining the dynamics of police predation and corruption during the enforcement in Nigeria. With interview data, I uniquely examined the intervention from the purview of predatory policing – an aspect of policing that is understudied in the context of COVID-19 policing despite its relevance in contemporary discourse on social control. Evidence indicates that, as COVID-19 policing characterised predation in Nigeria, the embedded problems of police corruption revolve around unresolved police institutional challenges and police-public connivance that results from moral decadence, thereby portending gloomy implications for law enforcement and society. Therefore, advancing and implementing police reforms, addressing moral corruption, and resolving widespread socioeconomic problems are very critical in the effective policing and containment of future public health crises. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Using data from the Afrobarometer surveys, this paper finds that people living in regions in which police corruption is more prevalent are more likely to report that they or someone in their family have been victims of physical assault. People living in more corrupted regions are also more likely to report that they or someone in their family has had something stolen from their home. We find no statistically significant gender differences in the average marginal effects. Controlling for the incidence of corruption in other domains reduces the size of the estimated association but does not render it insignificant in terms of statistical significance or magnitude. Non‐police corruption is also strongly associated with an increased risk of crime. For both types of crime, the evidence points to "transactional" police corruption (having to pay bribes to get help) rather than "predatory" police corruption (having to pay bribes to avoid problems) as driving the relationship. Finally, we show that, controlling for whether the respondent reports being a victim of either type of crime, police corruption predicts an increase in the probability that the respondent reports feeling unsafe while walking in their own neighborhood thus imposing a cost even on those who have not been victims. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We know little about how coalitional strategy affects the electoral fates of political parties in presidential democracy. The literature on coalitions in parliamentary systems shows a negative impact of entering government, while the coattail effects literature on presidential systems suggests some benefits. Combining elements from both approaches, we argue that there is a conditional electoral effect of joining the cabinet under coalitional presidentialism. Even considering presidentialism's heightened attribution of responsibility to a unipersonal executive, we find that coalition parties do indeed place a meaningful electoral wager whenever they choose to enter the president's cabinet as identifiable allies. Leveraging data on Brazilian elections held at national and local levels over 24 years and employing an innovative measure of portfolio salience, we show that the payoff of this wager is contingent on control of the most highly-valued cabinet positions and on the popular approval of the president. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Digital technologies are often perceived to be uniformly positive tools for anti-corruption purposes creating more transparency and making governments more accountable. However, the evidence is inconsistent and scarce with empirical research narrowly focused on ICT as a specific aspect of digitalization. This study offers new insights based on a context-dependent perspective to solve the puzzle with a more holistic view of the digital transformation process. We distinguish between rule-based and non-rule-based countries as different governance environments and suggest that the context determines how digitalization plays out. While digital tools contribute to the fight against bribery in rule-based economies, they facilitate corruptive practices in non-rule-based countries. A panel data analysis on 72 countries over a 9-year period from 2012 to 2020 supports our arguments and confirms the context-specific nature of digital transformation and its discrepant implications for different societies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We analyze a vote‐buying model where the members of a committee vote on a proposal important to a vote buyer. Each member incurs a privately‐drawn disutility if the proposal passes. We characterize the cheapest combination of bribes that guarantees the proposal passes in all equilibria. When members vote simultaneously, the number of bribes is at least 50% larger than the number of votes required to pass the proposal (vote threshold). The number of bribes increases with the dispersion of the disutility distribution and all members are bribed with sufficient dispersion. A proportional increase in the number of members and the vote threshold leads to a less‐than‐proportional increase in capture cost, and the cost may increase with the vote threshold. With sequential voting and disutility distribution U[0,1], all members are bribed and bribes are equal. Finally, sequential voting increases capture cost in small committees and decreases it in large committees. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Corrupt actors operate in an environment with numerous mechanisms designed to expose and punish their illegal behavior. Therefore, they organize their activity to reduce risk and uncertainty surrounding the situation, which takes place within and beyond a formal hierarchy. This article approaches the subject from a multidisciplinary perspective, applying theories of organization and organizationality—such as communicative constitution of organizations, social organization, partial organization, complete organization, neopatrimonialism, and patronage–to explain the organizing element of different forms of corruption. By introducing the ideas of the organization and organizationality, this study presents a new dimension of corruption and provides new insight into the scholarship on the topic. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Can reputational threat among coworkers reduce bribery in organizations? I exploit within- and across-organizational variation in bribery to design and implement a field experiment in the maternity wards of five Moroccan public hospitals. I test whether threatening to reveal information about ward workers' involvement in bribery to their coworkers dissuades them from taking bribes from patients. Healthcare workers cut back on taking bribes in higher-incidence maternity wards but not in lower-incidence wards. Qualitative data show that bribery's baseline incidence sets the costs of revealing. Workers tolerate only so much bribery in their wards before they face the negative social consequences of belonging to a work group that takes bribes. They thus correct their behavior when it crosses a threshold. Moreover, ineffective applications of the field interventions betrayed welfare-diminishing effects. I furnish evidence for a novel kind of policy lever against workplace bribery and shed new light on the dynamics of bribery inside organizations. Funding: Funding from different programs at Stanford University—Stanford Interdisciplinary Graduate Fellowship, Abbasi Program for Islamic Studies Summer Research Grant, Graduate Research Opportunity Grant, Sociology Research Opportunity Grant, Stanford Center on Philanthropy and Civil Society Grant, Freeman Spogli Institute's Mentored Global Research Fellowship, and Stanford Institute for Innovation and Entrepreneurship in Developing Economies Fellowship—are gratefully acknowledged. Supplemental Material: The online appendices are available at https://doi.org/10.1287/orsc.2021.15264. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Purpose: This study aims to examine the impact of economic freedom and corruption on bank stability in sub-Saharan Africa (SSA). Design/methodology/approach: This study uses 38 countries in SSA from 2008 to 2019 using system GMM technique. Findings: The authors found that greater economic freedom increases economic efficiency through improving bank stability. Besides this, the authors also find that banks in environments with greater business freedom, financial freedom, trade freedom and investment freedom are less prone to solvency. The results also show that corruption improves bank stability, suggesting evidence of the "grease the wheels" hypothesis. Practical implications: The results suggest to policymakers that a high economic freedom may be an appropriate policy toward enhancing bank stability. Besides this, the results also suggest to policymakers to prioritize addressing the core issues that encourage corruption to extort bribes. Originality/value: This study provides insightful discussion on whether economic freedom and its subcomponents and corruption have an effect on bank stability in SSA. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Considering the growing criticism by the USA of the bribery and corruption surrounding China's trade with Africa, this study uses panel data on 48 African countries over 17 years to examine whether the relationship between corruption and China's trade in Africa differs from that of USA–Africa trade relations. Contrary to expectations, we find that the relationship between corruption and trade with Africa is the same for both countries. Africa's trade with China and the USA increases as corruption increases. Our results imply that both countries have a similar trend of trading with African countries, and they might not care about corruption in Africa. Ultimately, both countries engage with Africa for their parochial economic and political interest. The results are robust to an alternative measure of corruption and endogeneity test using a two‐stage least‐square estimation technique. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article investigates the occurrence and outcomes of corporate tax-related political activity through bribery. Specifically, it examines the extent to which firms bribe government officials through gift-giving, banqueting, and entertaining activities and the extent of payoffs that firms gain from these bribery practices. Using a large hand-collected dataset of Chinese listed firms for the period from 2009 to 2014, I find that firms that spend more on consumption bribery exhibit a significantly lower tax burden. This negative association is mainly driven by small firms, non-state-owned firms, state-owned firms with weak political connections, and firms in competitive industries. Further evidence shows that the tax benefits from bribery are more apparent in more corrupt, less economically developed, and less liberalized regions. Furthermore, the payoffs of tax bribery are mitigated by 45.4% after the implementation of China's anti-corruption campaign in 2012. These findings have policy implications for governments to optimize investment environments and increase tax revenue by curbing power-for-money deals. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

his article analyses the notion of non-pecuniary bribes as an attribute of corruption offenses and draws attention to the problem of high legal uncertainty in understanding the content of this legal concept. The author highlights the essential criteria according to which one or another non-pecuniary benefit can be recognized as an unlawful or unjustified reward and proposes appropriate changes in the system of anti-corruption norms that would reduce legal uncertainty and bring the concept of a non-pecuniary bribe in line with the principle of the legality of criminal law (nullum crimen sine lege). The author also argues that the concept of non-pecuniary bribery was not properly implemented in the Criminal Code of the Republic of Lithuania, as it was not separated from the primary definitions of bribery and trading in influence, which are related to the monetary value of the bribe. On the one hand, this undermined the applicability of this concept; on the other hand, it posed the risk of its excessive application, even in cases where such benefits are not characterized by any negativity or are offered for legitimate official acts, even without prior agreement. The term “personal benefit” was also incorrectly chosen, as it unreasonably encourages the search for connections only within the sphere of personal life. From an anticorruption point of view, it does not matter what interests (personal, work, public, political, corporate or other) a non-material bribe is related to.

Can prosecutions by US authorities help spread enforcement of foreign bribery laws to other countries? In this article, we explore this question by re-examining earlier scholarship that found that US prosecutions of foreign corporations under the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act (FCPA) increase the likelihood that the corporation's home state will enforce its own foreign bribery laws. Using a conditional-frailty Cox model that allows us to model foreign bribery enforcement actions as repeat-events, we do not find evidence that FCPA prosecutions lead to sustained increases of foreign bribery enforcement by target countries. We also find that prior results are not robust to the inclusion of an important confounding variable: a country's level of exposure to corruption in their trading partners. Still, while our findings indicate a more limited role of US law enforcement in this area, we nonetheless see many promising avenues for future research on transnational law enforcement and its consequences. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study investigates how bribery is defined, negotiated, and practiced in the everyday lives of ordinary North Koreans. Reflecting on interviews spanning over two decades with North Korean migrants in South Korea and China, a team of North Korea experts has identified the patterns of micro-level bribery in everyday life in North Korea that differ, to some extent, from those of other post-communist states in Eastern Europe and Asia. By carefully examining the accounts of ten former North Korean residents, the researchers find that the traditional socialist economy, once prevalent in workplaces, schools, and hospitals, has now been supplanted by individual-to-individual private market interactions. Moreover, bribery serves not only as an informal practice but also as a "moral economy," which differs from the more organized forms of corruption seen at the elite and enterprise levels. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article analyses the notion of non-pecuniary bribes as an attribute of corruption offenses and draws attention to the problem of high legal uncertainty in understanding the content of this legal concept. The author highlights the essential criteria according to which one or another non-pecuniary benefit can be recognized as an unlawful or unjustified reward and proposes appropriate changes in the system of anti-corruption norms that would reduce legal uncertainty and bring the concept of a non-pecuniary bribe in line with the principle of the legality of criminal law (nullum crimen sine lege). The author also argues that the concept of non-pecuniary bribery was not properly implemented in the Criminal Code of the Republic of Lithuania, as it was not separated from the primary definitions of bribery and trading in influence, which are related to the monetary value of the bribe. On the one hand, this undermined the applicability of this concept; on the other hand, it posed the risk of its excessive application, even in cases where such benefits are not characterized by any negativity or are offered for legitimate official acts, even without prior agreement. The term “personal benefit” was also incorrectly chosen, as it unreasonably encourages the search for connections only within the sphere of personal life. From an anticorruption point of view, it does not matter what interests (personal, work, public, political, corporate or other) a non-material bribe is related to. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Our paper examines the influence of the historical legacy regarding the impact of the border of the former Habsburg Empire, the former political membership of the Romanian Communist Party (PCR), and perceptions about the communist past - in understanding the current tolerance of bribery in Romania, more than 25 years after the fall of communism. We started from an existing background suggesting that in the aftermath of the fall of communism, Romania underwent significant socio-economic changes, with persisting regional disparities accentuated by historical and cultural legacies. Using representative data from the European and World Values Survey joint dataset v.2.0, other relevant sources (Public Opinion Barometer from 2000 and 2007), variable selection and analysis methods based on DK/NA value treatment, binary derivations, the LASSO pack in Stata 17.0 together with different types of regressions including OLS, binary and ordered logistic ones, cross-validations both random and based on wellestablished criteria (mixed-effects modeling), and collinearity removal techniques based on maximum accepted values of the Variance Inflation Factor (VIF), the results highlight that respondents from certain Romanian macro-regions that experienced higher levels of membership in the PCR and positive views about communism are less likely to be tolerant of bribery. It appears that if the region of residence was part of the former Habsburg Empire, current intentions for bribery are higher. Furthermore, our findings suggest that the propensity to bribe is negatively affected by current macro elements, such as higher crime levels, material deprivation, urban connectivity or lower levels of migration abroad, and left-wing voting preferences. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Controlling shareholders have been directly involved in some of the largest and most consequential bribery scandals in the world over the course of the last decade. Nevertheless, the academic literature and the dominant international model of anticorruption law have neglected the dynamics and implications of controlling shareholder involvement in the payment of bribes. We argue that controlling shareholders, especially in family-controlled firms, may be uniquely positioned to lead corrupt schemes. We then analyze the incidence of this phenomenon in recent U.S. enforcement actions under the FCPA and in Brazilian enforcement actions under the Car Wash (Lava Jato) anticorruption operation. Controlled companies account for a minority of the FCPA cases, but for a large majority of the Brazilian cases. Controlling shareholders were implicated in a significant portion of actions against controlled companies in both contexts. We argue that the dominant international model, which is premised on organizational liability and incentives for compliance programs, is ill-suited to addressing cases of bribery led by controlling shareholders, and call for a distinct array of legal responses. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article is of a scientific and research nature, and its subject matter covers the object of the crime of a creditor's bribery (Article 302 § 2 of the Criminal Code). The article aims to resolve the doubts it raises. The author presents its development in Polish criminal law and analyses the features specified in the provision: a creditor, financial benefits, means of granting them, a promise to grant such benefits, acting to the detriment of other creditors, a relationship between a creditor's action and an insolvency proceeding or a proceeding aimed at preventing bankruptcy, an insolvency proceeding, and other proceedings aimed at preventing bankruptcy. The interpretation of all these notions is proposed in the article based on doctrine and case law. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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Research Summary: During armed conflicts, when the rule of law collapses, bribery often becomes prevalent. Yet, the effect of bribery on firm performance under those circumstances remains unclear. Bribery could provide access to scarce resources, but it could also be the result of extortion. This study argues that bribes can improve firm performance during certain conflicts, when violence reduces public officials' ability to threaten firms. Using longitudinal data from businesses in Nigeria during the Boko Haram insurgency in 2009–2014, I find that firms exposed to Boko Haram attacks that bribed outperformed firms that did not bribe. Qualitative data suggest that the insurgency limited public officials' ability to threaten firms, making bribes less a means of rent extraction and more a way for firms to access resources. Managerial Summary: In many economies, bribery is widespread despite being illegal. This study shows that during times of violent conflict bribery can be a way for firms to maintain operations despite the disruption. Using data from firms in Nigeria during the 2009–2014 Boko Haram insurgency, I find that firms that bribed tended to suffer less from the effects of the insurgency. Bribing firms were better able to secure protection and access transportation networks. At the same time, the conflict reduced local officials' ability to extort firms, making bribes less likely to involve extortion. These results highlight the extreme circumstances that firms face during violent conflicts and the illicit practices that may enable them to survive in the short run. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The excess of mystery and 'meaning' in Twin Peaks: Season 3 (2017) reflects the post-truth ontological dissonance of information overload, tantalising the thirst for answers that dominates digital communication. Combining its clues and codes with payoffs for 'long-term fan investments' (Hills, 2020: 197) situates the series between two modes of fan participation: the curative puzzle-solving of complex 'Quality TV', and cult television's 'hyperdiegesis'. Season 3 is complex cult television, encouraging forensic and creative engagement. Replicating the polarisation of contemporary discourse while simultaneously promoting algorithmic literacy informs Mark Frost's politicised vision for Twin Peaks, and David Lynch's aesthetic experiments amplify this. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We investigate the impact of CEO career horizon on corporate bribery. Based upon the research on time horizon of corporate investments, we argue that bribery may be implemented as an investment in strategic relationships with long-term motivations in emerging markets and, for that matter, CEOs with longer career horizons rather than shorter career horizons are more likely to make bribery investments. Using a sample of 2,914 Chinese listed companies from 2010 to 2018, we find support for the argument. The finding challenges the long-held assumption that short-term oriented CEOs are prone to paying bribes. Further, we augment the research by expounding upon the way that state ownership moderates the relationship between CEO career horizon and firm bribery investment. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper, developed in the long shadow cast by the 40th anniversary of the first publication of In Search Excellence offers a critical reanalysis of the orientations of the excellence project and a reconsideration of its legacy. Observing that the excellence prevails in the face of a host of academic critiques, which highlight its methodological, conceptual and empirical failings, the paper argues that In Search of Excellence continues to exercise an influence on the theory and practice of management because critics have made the conduct of Peters and Waterman their central analytical concern. Changing this focus the paper offers reflections on the lived experience of business excellence and the choices pursued by the exemplars of excellence. Drawing upon newspaper archives and other contemporary sources the paper focuses upon two of the fourteen organizations highlighted as exemplars of excellence and demonstrates serious misconduct including bribery, corruption, racism, sexism and anti-Semitism within these settings. Noting that these features of the lived experience of business excellence have evaded academic scrutiny for some 40 years, the paper concludes with the suggestion that management pedagogy and research must now adapt to acknowledge the unspeakable nature of business excellence. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Distrust in the civil service is not unique to any country but felt across much of the globe amid ascendant populist movements. A significant correlate of distrust in the civil service is the perception of corruption among bureaucrats. Our research addresses two main questions. First, in OECD countries, to what extent does the public view bureaucrats as corrupt? Second, what factors explain these perceptions? Data from 23 countries in the International Social Survey Programme's 2016 Role of Government survey are analyzed using multilevel logistic regression models. Among the explanatory variables included in this multilevel analysis are respondents' exposure to bribery, political party support, and political efficacy. Country-level correlates drawn from the 2016 Worldwide Governance Indicators are analyzed to explore the impact of governance quality on corruption perceptions. Results indicate that better quality of government is associated with lower perceptions of bureaucratic corruption. Likewise, notable individual-level findings suggest political efficacy and exposure to corruption are significantly associated with corruption perceptions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This research investigates the prevalence of corruption and use of intermediaries at immigration sites, the municipality, and the Criminal Investigation Department (CID) in Mogadishu, Somalia. Through an online survey, 80 responses were recorded from residents in Mogadishu who work in academia, businesses, and international NGOs. Five anonymous civil servants were interviewed over telephone to further learn about the difficulties and potential solutions to the corruption problem. The statistical analysis revealed that Immigration is relatively less corrupted. This is due to changes in management and administrative reforms, ability to challenge fraudulent temptation of staff through call centers, and having better institutional and staff capacities than the other two institutions in question. Furthermore, direct supervision from the Ministry of Internal Security at the site of immigration with relatively enhanced working conditions with higher salaries allows for better functioning compared to Mogadishu Municipality, which is a local authority, and CID, a subdivision of an underpaid police department. Alternatively, more than half of the citizens use an intermediary to obtain their passports, birth certificates, and criminal record letters. According to the binary regression analysis, male applicants are more likely to use an intermediary than females. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper explored the attitudes of Kuwaiti residents toward corruption practices in Kuwait and the role of the Nazaha Kuwait Anti-Corruption Authority in tackling such actions. To achieve the aim of this study, a survey questionnaire, which was based on a survey introduced by the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime in 2018, was distributed to 535 participants in Kuwait. The questionnaire covered areas related to problems facing Kuwait, behaviors of public officers, opinions on practices of public sector employees, corruption in Kuwait by industry, the role of Nazaha in Kuwait, the correlation between bribery and access to government services, and the reporting of corruption in Kuwait. The collected data were analyzed with SPSS. The findings indicate that 374 respondents noted corruption as the most serious problem in Kuwait, which is practiced systematically in Kuwait due to the prevalence of nepotism and other cultural reasons. In addition, it was found that there is dissatisfaction with the role of Nazaha, with 46.9 and 32.3% of participants reporting that Nazaha did not react in time and did not catch offenders, respectively. This study suggests that Nazaha should be empowered with further legal means to tackle corruption in the future. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Bitcoin uses blockchain technology to maintain transactions order and provides probabilistic guarantees to prevent double-spending, assuming that an attacker's computational power does not exceed 50% of the network power. In this article, we design a novel bribery attack and show that this guarantee can be hugely undermined. Miners are assumed to be rational in this setup, and they are given incentives that are dynamically calculated. In this attack, the adversary misuses the Bitcoin protocol to bribe miners and maximize their gained advantage. We will reformulate the bribery attack to propose a general mathematical foundation upon which we build multiple strategies. We show that, unlike Whale Attack, these strategies are practical, especially in the future when halvings lower the mining rewards. In the so-called "guaranteed variable-rate bribing with commitment" strategy, through optimization by Differential Evolution (DE), we show how double-spending is possible in the Bitcoin ecosystem for any transaction whose value is above 218.9BTC, and this comes with 100% success rate. A slight reduction in the success probability, e.g., by 10%, brings the threshold down to 165BTC. If the rationality assumption holds, then this shows how vulnerable blockchain-based systems like Bitcoin are. We suggest a soft fork on Bitcoin to fix this issue at the end. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]