bribery and corruption

[Universe Prince]

Over at Economist.com there is a nice article about bribery appropriately titled "How to grease a palm". Of most interest to me were the end of the article and the article's accompanying graph.

Jakob Svensson, an economist at Stockholm University, has cut through cultural stereotypes to search for hard data on corrupt economies. He has found that socialist and recently socialist economies show higher levels of corruption than others. Among the factors he has tested for correlation with corruption is the overall education level of the adult population. A second is openness to imports (measured by imports as a proportion of GDP), which is linked with opportunities for smuggling. A third is freedom of the press (as ranked by Freedom House, a civil-liberties watchdog), on the hypothesis that independent journalists will expose, and thereby curtail, corruption. The fourth is the number of days needed to start a business, a proxy for the number of permits required, and therefore red tape. Mr Svensson found clear correlations between all these variables and the overall level of corruption.

Among the many factors that determine the level of corruption in a country, one stands out. Whether it takes the shape of an American congressman dispensing a $2 trillion budget or a horde of petty officials administering a Bible-sized rulebook, where there is a lot of government, there is a lot of bribery. Corruption thus offers yet another confirmation of the dictum attributed to Thomas Jefferson that “the government is best which governs least.”

SOURCE: Economist.com

The article seems to cover bribery to and from representatives of government. How any of this relates to things like payola that occur almost exclusively within the non-government sector of society I don't know. But then whether or not payola is on the same level as the bribery discussed in the article is open to debate.

[Plane]

That seems to make sense .

Often the purpose of bribes is to cut red tape .


More red tape would mean more oppurtunity  , at some point there might be so much red tape that bribed circumvention is required for normal life to be conducted.