Regulation and corporate corruption : new evidence from the telecom sector

Sanford V. BERG, Liangliang JIANG, Chen LIN

Research output: Journal PublicationsJournal Article (refereed)peer-review

30 Citations (Scopus)

Abstract

This paper examines how government regulation in developing countries affects the form of corruption between business customers and service providers in the telecom sector. We match the World Bank enterprise-level data on bribes with a unique cross-country telecom regulation dataset collected by Wallsten et al. (2004), finding that (1) strong regulatory substance (the content of regulation) and regulatory governance reduce corruption; (2) competition and privatization reduces corruption; (3) the effects of regulatory substance on corruption control are stronger in countries with state-owned or partially state-owned telecoms, greater competition, and higher telecommunication fees; and (4) bureaucratic quality exert substitution effects to regulatory substance in deterring corruption. Overall, our results suggest that regulatory strategies that reduce information asymmetry and increase accountability tend to reduce illegal side-payments for connections.
Original languageEnglish
Pages (from-to)22-43
Number of pages22
JournalJournal of Comparative Economics
Volume40
Issue number1
DOIs
Publication statusPublished - 1 Feb 2012

Funding

We thank Chunrong Ai, Hanming Fang, David Sappington and seminar participants at University of Florida for their helpful comments.

Keywords

  • Corruption
  • Regulation
  • Telecommunications

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