In the private sector, corruption increases the cost of business through the price of illicit payments themselves, the management cost of negotiating with officials and the risk of breached agreements or detection. Although some claim corruption reduces costs by cutting bureaucracy, the availability of bribes can also induce officials to contrive new rules and delays. Openly removing costly and lengthy regulations are better than covertly allowing them to be bypassed by using bribes. Where corruption inflates the cost of business, it also distorts the playing field, shielding firms with connections from competition and thereby sustaining inefficient firms.[7]
Corruption also generates economic distortion in the public sector by diverting public investment into capital projects where bribes and kickbacks are more plentiful. Officials may increase the technical complexity of public sector projects to conceal or pave the way for such dealings, thus further distorting investment.[8] Corruption also lowers compliance with construction, environmental, or other regulations, reduces the quality of government services and infrastructure, and increases budgetary pressures on government.
Economists argue that one of the factors behind the differing economic development in Africa and Asia is that in Africa, corruption has primarily taken the form of rent extraction with the resulting financial capital moved overseas rather than invested at home (hence the stereotypical, but often accurate, image of African dictators having Swiss bank accounts). In Nigeria, for example, more than 0 billion was stolen from the treasury by Nigeria’s leaders between 1960 and 1999.[9]
University of Massachusetts Amherst researchers estimated that from 1970 to 1996, capital flight from 30 Sub-Saharan countries totaled 7bn, exceeding those nations’ external debts.[10] (The results, expressed in retarded or suppressed development, have been modeled in theory by economist Mancur Olson.) In the case of Africa, one of the factors for this behavior was political instability, and the fact that new governments often confiscated previous government’s corruptly obtained assets. This encouraged officials to stash their wealth abroad, out of reach of any future expropriation. In contrast, Asian administrations such as Suharto’s New Order often took a cut on business transactions or provided conditions for development, through infrastructure investment, law and order, etc.
In fiction:
The Financier (1912), The Titan (1914), and The Stoic (1947), Theodore Dreiser’s Trilogy of Desire, based on the life of the transit mogul Charles Tyson Yerkes
Mr. Smith Goes to Washington (Hollywood film, 1939)
Atlas Shrugged (1957 novel)
The Government Inspector (1836 play)
Henry Adams’ novel Democracy (1880)
HBO’s television series about Baltimore, The Wire
Carl Hiaasen’s novel Sick Puppy (1999)
Animal Farm a novel by George Orwell
Training Day (2001 film)
Exit Wounds (2001 film)
American Gangster (2007 film)
Robert Penn Warren’s novel All the King’s Men (1946)
Gumapang Ka Sa Lusak(1990 film)
Sa Kabila ng Lahat (1991 film)
Guru (2007 film) (Indian film)
Katherine Boo’s non-fiction book Behind the Beautiful Forevers (2012)
Netflix’s television program House of Cards (U.S. TV series) (2013-present)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Political_corruption
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