Fighting Corruption in Developing Countries

Poorer countries are clearly more corrupt than richer countries. While this is a matter of fact, the debate about causality is still open. Is corruption the single most important reason why many sensible reforms essential for economic development fail in developing economies or does economic development raise demand for fighting corruption?

At a given level of development, what are the costs of corruption and the most promising means of de-corrupting institutions – in government administration, security forces, and business? Does encouraging whistle-blowing produce desired outcomes? How can exit opportunities be provided for petty offenders? Are fostering transparency, advising citizens on how to make complaints and establishing institutions to handle the resulting cases promising solutions in practice? Are monetary incentives effective? Does cultural heritage render attempts to improve governance a futile effort? Is ethical training possible? What is the role of business in encouraging good public and private governance?

To tackle these issues and to generate concrete measures as the outcome of our panel, we propose three areas of action:

• Measuring the Costs
• Raising Transparency
• Fighting Systemic Corruption