A free press is bad news for corruption

The Law of Peoples John Rawls Harvard 1999 John Rawls, the great political philosopher, has turned his reflections to questions of international justice, much as his philosophical ancestor Kant did toward the end of his career. Indeed, Kant's conception of a "pacific federation" of states in Perpetual Peace is Rawls's acknowledged model for the "realistic utopia" sketched in The Law of Peoples, which expands upon his 1993 essay by the same title (without, however, revising its basic argument). Despite differing philosophical constraints and geopolitical conditions, both Kant and Rawls aim to develop an ideal normative framework for international law that accommodates a measure of realism and rejects the idea of a world-state. Unfortunately, in its uncritical acceptance of so-called "decent hierarchical societies" even at the level of ideal theory, the normative claim of Rawls's Law of Peoples is undermined. This philosophical appeasement, meant to secure perpetual peace in our time through a moderately demanding Law of Peoples that liberal and "decent" hierarchical societies alike can endorse, departs fundamentally from Kant's cosmopolitanism. For Kant, the "First Definitive Article of a Perpetual Peace-as opposed to a temporary interruption of hostilities-is that each member state of the foedus pacif cum must have a republican form of government, which is partly founded upon "the principle of legal equality for everyone (as citizens)." By contrast, Rawls weakens his ideal of international justice to buy the assent of hierarchical societies, which by definition lack equality among citizens, at the price of sacrificing a theoretical basis for justifying reforms of the practices and institutions of these hierarchical societies above a minimal level of decency. Rawls's complex argument begins by extending the original position, in which principles of justice for the basic structure of society are chosen under epistemic constraints that ensure fairness, from a single liberal society to what he calls the Society of Liberal Peoples. In a second step, though still within ideal theory, he argues that the substantive principles comprising the Law of Peoples are also acceptable to decent hierarchical societies, which possess decent consultation hierarchies and common good conceptions of justice. Despite being inegalitarian, decent hierarchical societies do respect basic human rights, allow some dissent, and at least consult with representatives of groups whose members are denied full citizenship rights. …

The Law of Peoples

Corruption is a persistent feature of human societies over time and space. The sale of parliamentary seats in 'rotten boroughs' in England before the Reform Act of 1832 and 'machine politics' in immigrant cities in the US at the turn of the 19th century are just two historical examples. Contemporaneous examples also abound and not only from developing countries such as Nigeria, India, and Philippines but also from transition economies such as Russia. Some of these and many other instances of corruption are extensively documented in The Politics of Corruption, edited by Robert Williams and associates. Its four volumes contain a large collection of articles published during the past 40 years in social science journals with contributions from political scientists, sociologists, anthropologists, law scholars, and a few economists including Andrei Shleifer and Robert W. Vishny. It is not surprising to find the work of Shleifer and Vishny represented in this interdisciplinary collection. As is evident from the collection of articles reprinted in The Grabbing Hand, they have, with various co-authors, made a large number of important contributions to the study of corruption and other government pathologies throughout the 1990s. Currently, the study of corruption is also high on the research agenda of international organisations such as the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund (IMF), and some of the most significant studies on corruption coming out of the IMF in recent years are collected in Governance,

Economic Analysis of Corruption: A Survey

Economic analysis of corruption: a survey*

This paper provides a review of the literature on unit roots and cointegration in panels where the time dimension (T), and the cross section dimension (N) are relatively large. It distinguishes between the first generation tests developed on the assumption of the cross section independence, and the second generation tests that allow, in a variety of forms and degrees, the dependence that might prevail across the different units in the panel. In the analysis of cointegration, the hypothesis testing and estimation problems are further complicated by the possibility of cross section cointegration which could arise if the unit roots in the different cross section units are due to common random walk components.

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Unit Roots and Cointegration in Panels

Corruption, evasion and the abuse of power (and the possibility thereof) are pervasive features of economic activity. A prominent instance is tax collection. This paper examines the implications of corruptibility and the potential abuse of authority for the effects and optimal design of (potentially non-linear) tax collection schemes.

Corruption, Extortion and Evasion

Corruption, extortion and evasion

Public economics studies how government taxing and spending activities affect the economy—economic efficiency and the distribution of income and wealth. This comprehensive text in public economics covers the core topics market failure and taxation as well as recent developments in the political economy and public choice literatures. It is unique not only in its broad scope but in its balance between public finance and public choice and its combination of theory and relevant empirical evidence. After introducing the theory and methodology of public economics and reviewing the efficiency of the competitive equilibrium, the book presents a historical and theoretical overview of the public sector. It then discusses departures from efficiency, including imperfect competition and asymmetric information; issues in political economy, including rent-seeking (a topic often omitted from other texts); equity; taxation issues, including tax evasion and its consequences; fiscal federalism and tax competition among independent jurisdictions; and the intertemporal issues of social security and economic growth. This text introduces the reader to the theory of public economics and the most significant results of the analysis, providing an overview of the current state of the field. It is accessible to anyone with a background of intermediate microeconomics and macroeconomics and can be used in advanced undergraduate as well as graduate courses. Although the mathematics has been kept to a minimum, the book remains analytical rather than discursive. Annotated suggestions for further reading and numerous exercises are included at the end of each chapter.

Intermediate Public Economics

This paper studies the relationship between fiscal decentralization and electoral accountability, by analyzing how decentralization impacts upon incentive and selection effects, and thus on voter welfare. The model abstracts from features such as public good spillovers or economies of scale, so that absent elections, voters are indifferent about the fiscal regime. The effect of fiscal centralization on voter welfare works through two channels: (i) via its effect on the probability of pooling by the bad incumbent; (ii) conditional on the probability of pooling, the extent to which, with centralization, the incumbent can divert rents in some regions without this being detected by voters in other regions (selective rent diversion). Both these effects depend on the information structure: whether voters only observe fiscal policy in their own region, in all regions, or an intermediate case with a uniform tax across all regions. More voter information does not necessarily raise voter welfare, and under some conditions, voters would choose uniform over differentiated taxes ex ante to constrain selective rent diversion.

https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/Delivery.cfm/SSRN_ID775505_code102458.pdf?abstractid=775505&mirid=1

Decentralization and Electoral Accountability: Incentives, Separation, and Voter Welfare

Public economics studies how government taxing and spending activities affect the economy—economic efficiency and the distribution of income and wealth. This comprehensive text on public economics covers the core topics of market failure and taxation as well as recent developments in both policy and the academic literature. It is unique not only in its broad scope but in its balance between public finance and public choice and its combination of theory and relevant empirical evidence. The book covers the theory and methodology of public economics; presents a historical and theoretical overview of the public sector; and discusses such topics as departures from efficiency (including imperfect competition and asymmetric information), issues in political economy, equity, taxation, fiscal federalism, and tax competition among independent jurisdictions. Suggestions for further reading, from classic papers to recent research, appear in each chapter, as do exercises. The mathematics has been kept to a minimum without sacrificing intellectual rigor; the book remains analytical rather than discursive. This second edition has been thoroughly updated throughout. It offers new chapters on behavioral economics, limits to redistribution, international taxation, cost-benefit analysis, and the economics of climate policy. Additional exercises have been added and many sections revised in response to advice from readers of the first edition.

Jean Hindriks

Papers

Corruption, Extortion and Evasion

Corruption, extortion and evasion

Intermediate Public Economics

Decentralization and Electoral Accountability: Incentives, Separation, and Voter Welfare

Intermediate Public Economics 2nd edition