Measuring and reducing the impact of corruption in infrastructure

Charles Kenny

No 4099, Policy Research Working Paper Series from The World Bank

Abstract: This paper examines what we can say about the extent and impact of corruption in infrastructure in developing countries using existing evidence. It looks at different approaches to estimating the extent of corruption and reports on the results of such studies. It suggests that there is considerable evidence that most existing perceptions measures appear to be very weak proxies for the actual extent of corruption in the infrastructure sector, largely (but inaccurately) measuring petty rather than grand corruption. Existing survey evidence is more reliable, but limited in extent and still subject to sufficient uncertainty that it should not be used as a tool for differentiating countries in terms of access to infrastructure finance or appropriate policy models. The paper discusses evidence for the relative costs of corruption impacts and suggests that a focus on bribe payments as the indicator of the costs of corruption in infrastructure may be misplaced. It draws some conclusions regarding priorities for infrastructure anti-corruption research and activities in projects, in particular regarding disaggregated and actionable indicators of weak governance and corruption.

Keywords: Corruption&Anitcorruption Law; Public Sector Corruption&Anticorruption Measures; Poverty Monitoring&Analysis; Social Accountability; Government Diagnostic Capacity Building (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2006-12-01
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-dev and nep-reg
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (19)

Downloads: (external link)
http://www-wds.worldbank.org/external/default/WDSC ... ered/PDF/wps4099.pdf (application/pdf)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:wbk:wbrwps:4099

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in Policy Research Working Paper Series from The World Bank 1818 H Street, N.W., Washington, DC 20433. Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Roula I. Yazigi ().