Publication:
Corruption Spotlight

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2017
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2017-06-12
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The weak enforcement of a rule of law is closely related to the prevalence of corruption. Corruption involves different types of rule-violations by bureaucrats, politicians and businesses where power is misused for private benefit. Not surprisingly, corruption is correlated with the weak enforcement of formal institutions in general, including property rights and the formal rules of politics. All of these are in turn strongly correlated with the level of development. Countries that have high levels of corruption are likely to have weak property rights, a weak rule of law, high levels of corruption, informal political rents, and low levels of productive capabilities (even if they sometimes have high per capita incomes as a result of natural resources). These correlations raise important questions and challenges for policy.
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Khan, Mushtaq H.. 2017. Corruption Spotlight. World Development Report 2017 Background Paper;. © World Bank. http://hdl.handle.net/10986/27045 License: CC BY 3.0 IGO.
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