Some Economic and Political Determinants of Global Corruption

Abstract

This essay is focused in the study of the causes of corruption by means of a theoretical model proposed by Alberto Ades and Rafael Di Tella (1999). From this model three hypotheses were derived: a) the natural gains (mainly derived from petroleum) stimulate the corruption; b) the increases in the wages of the bureaucrats diminish the corruption and; c) the degree in which a society is able to monitor to its government officials reduces the corruption level. Because of endogeneity, the estimations were made by Two Steps Least Squares (2SLS). The results showed that, leaving like the only variable that measure the degree of monitoring of the society to the GDP per capita, the totality of the parameters is very significant. With this model the use of the variable of petroleum exports confirms the hypothesis that the natural gains stimulate the corruption, but the wages of the bureaucrats do not have the waited signs, that is to say, that greater wages of the bureaucrats do not reduce the corruption in the world-wide level sample. In which it concerns to the role of the petroleum exports, its effect only was significant in the group of countries of medium income, being observed that such exports increase the corruption of this group of countries.