Corruption
Corruption, Rent-Seeking Behavior
& Informal Practices
Online
6, 13, 20, 27 November 2020
WINIR sponsored the “Four Fridays for Corruption“, a mini-series of online workshops jointly organized by the Institute for International Management (Loughborough University London), the Centre for Political Economy and Institutional Studies (Birkbeck University of London), and the Centre for Comparative Studies of Emerging Economics (University College London). The series sought to bring together researchers from different disciplines to improve our theoretical, empirical and methodological understanding of different aspects of corruption, rent-seeking behaviours and informal practices within different institutional contexts.
A general consensus exists that corruption and other forms of rent-seeking behaviour impose tremendous costs on society, because they reduce funds devoted to public goods including safety, social services, and infrastructure. They create economic distortions, lower economic growth and increase inequality. From the institutional perspective, institutions – as rules and norms able to constrain and shape human interactions – should minimise these collective action problems by discouraging and penalising rent-seeking behaviours. Within the literature on individuals’ conformity and compliance to rules (broadly defined as social norms), emphasis has been placed on the study of the reasons why institutions designed to contain such behaviours fail to act as expected. Across different social science disciplines a consensus is emerging that corruption and other forms of rent-seeking behaviours cannot be reduced to a lack of institutional quality.
This series featured work that sheds light on corruption and other forms of rent-seeking behaviours within different institutional and socio-cultural contexts from a broad and interdisciplinary perspective. The workshop also explored different aspects of informality, the complementarities existing between informal practices and different forms of institutions, and the relational mechanisms linking informal practices and corruption.
Workshop convenors: Luca Andriani (luca.andriani@bbk.ac.uk), Randolph L. Bruno (Randolph.bruno@ucl.ac.uk), Elodie Douarin (e.douarin@ucl.ac.uk), Gerhard Schnyder (G.Schnyder@lboro.ac.uk).
Friday 6 November 2020
The Political Economy of Corruption
09:00-11:00 GMT
Dorottya Sallai (London School of Economics, UK) & Jozsef Martin (Corvinus University Budapest, Hungary), “Institutions as Agents of Systemic corruption and Rent-Seeking”
Mogens Justesen (Copenhagen Business School, Denmark) & Luigi Manzetti (Southern Methodist University, USA), “Poverty, Partisanship and Vote Buying”
Giovanna Rodriguez-Garcia (Center for Research and Teaching in Economics, Mexico), “Party System Nationalization Promoting Accountability to Curb Corruption”
Friday 13 November 2020
Informal Practices, Corruption and Institutional Change
09:00-11:00 GMT
John Heathershaw (University of Exeter, UK), David Lewis (University of Exeter, UK) & Tom Mayne (University of Exeter, UK), “What Happens in London Stays in London? The Relationship between Overseas AML Enforcement and the Domestic Position of Kleptocratic Ruling Elites”
Kyong Jun Choi (Jeju National University, Korea) & Jonson N. Porteux (Kansai Gaidai University, Japan), “Leviathan for Sale: Maritime Police Privatization, Bureaucratic Corruption and the Sewol Disaster”
Emrah Gülsunar (University of Lund, Sweden), “Making Economic Growth Sustained: British Parliament, Legislation and Abolishing Rent-Seeking in Cotton Textile Industry during the Industrial Revolution, 1748-1832”
Friday 20 November 2020
Consequences of Corruption
13:00-15:00 GMT
Andrea Tulli (University of Warwick, UK), “Sweeping the Dirt Under the Rug: Measuring Spillovers from an Anti-Corruption Measure”
Luca J. Uberti (University of Luxembourg, Luxembourg), “Corruption and Growth: New Historical Evidence”
Riccardo D’Emidio (University of Sussex, UK), “Policing Corruption or Corrupted Policing? Social Morms and Integrity in the Ghana Police Service”
Friday 27 November 2020
Bribery, Anti-Social Behaviour and Local Governance
13:00-15:00 GMT
Kristina S. Weißmüller (University of Bern, Switzerland), “Tolerating Bribery in Public, Private and Hybrid Organizations”
Jérémy Celse (ESSCA School of Management, France) & Guillermo Mateu (Burgundy School of Business, France), “Rent-Seeking Tournament with Sabotage: Fighting Antisocial Behaviours with Envy?”
Zsoka Koczan (European Bank for Reconstruction and Development, London) & Michael Ganslmeie (University of Oxford, UK), “Governance in Regions and Cities”