IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/pra/mprapa/39306.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Unravelling the anatomy of legal corruption in India: Focusing on the ‘honest graft’ by the politicians

Author

Listed:
  • Pethe, Abhay
  • Tandel, Vaidehi
  • Gandhi, Sahil

Abstract

Corruption in India is ubiquitous and may be broadly identified as illegal and legal. This paper delves into the typology of legal corruption in India, which, apart from abuse of discretionary power, and tactical law and policy making, also includes – not so well documented – use of information advantage and the externality impact of such information by politicians to make gains. The paper, by analyzing the growth rates in assets of some politicians in the Mumbai Metropolitan Region, finds that the elected politicians experience a higher growth in their assets as compared to the market growth. The findings strongly support the existence of this form of legal corruption in India. The paper recommends that practices of ‘misuse’ of information advantage by politicians to make legal gains could be reduced by enforcing greater transparency via dissemination of relevant information in public domain. These measures must be backed by broad based reforms – that are commensurate with the current level of economic development – that would bring about system-wide changes in an effort to lower overall corruption in the country.

Suggested Citation

  • Pethe, Abhay & Tandel, Vaidehi & Gandhi, Sahil, 2012. "Unravelling the anatomy of legal corruption in India: Focusing on the ‘honest graft’ by the politicians," MPRA Paper 39306, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    • Handle: RePEc:pra:mprapa:39306
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://mpra.ub.uni-muenchen.de/39306/1/MPRA_paper_39306.pdf
    File Function: original version
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Aidt, Toke & Dutta, Jayasri & Sena, Vania, 2008. "Governance regimes, corruption and growth: Theory and evidence," Journal of Comparative Economics, Elsevier, vol. 36(2), pages 195-220, June.
    2. Oskar Kurer, 2005. "Corruption: An Alternative Approach to Its Definition and Measurement," Political Studies, Political Studies Association, vol. 53, pages 222-239, March.
    3. Basu, Kaushik, 2011. "Why, for a Class of Bribes, the Act of Giving a Bribe should be Treated as Legal," MPRA Paper 50335, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    4. Pierre-Guillaume Méon & Khalid Sekkat, 2005. "Does corruption grease or sand the wheels of growth?," Public Choice, Springer, vol. 122(1), pages 69-97, January.
    5. Lessmann, Christian & Markwardt, Gunther, 2010. "One Size Fits All? Decentralization, Corruption, and the Monitoring of Bureaucrats," World Development, Elsevier, vol. 38(4), pages 631-646, April.
    6. Edward L. Glaeser & Claudia Goldin, 2006. "Corruption and Reform: Introduction," NBER Chapters, in: Corruption and Reform: Lessons from America's Economic History, pages 3-22, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    7. Naved Ahmad & Oscar Brookins, 2004. "On Corruption and Countervailing Actions in Three South Asian Nations," Journal of Economic Policy Reform, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 7(1), pages 21-30.
    8. Laffont, Jean-Jacques, 2001. "Incentives and Political Economy," OUP Catalogue, Oxford University Press, number 9780199248681.
    9. Simeon Djankov & Rafael La Porta & Florencio Lopez-de-Silanes & Andrei Shleifer, 2010. "Disclosure by Politicians," American Economic Journal: Applied Economics, American Economic Association, vol. 2(2), pages 179-209, April.
    10. Shang-Jin Wei, 1999. "Corruption in economic development - beneficial grease, minor annoyance, or major obstacle?," Policy Research Working Paper Series 2048, The World Bank.
    11. Oskar Kurer, 2005. "Corruption: An Alternative Approach to Its Definition and Measurement," Political Studies, Political Studies Association, vol. 53(1), pages 222-239, March.
    12. Alan Heston & Vijay Kumar, 2008. "Institutional Flaws and Corruption Incentives in India," Journal of Development Studies, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 44(9), pages 1243-1261.
    13. James E. Alt & David Dreyer Lassen, 2003. "The Political Economy of Institutions and Corruption in American States," Journal of Theoretical Politics, , vol. 15(3), pages 341-365, July.
    14. Sambit Bhattacharyya & Raghbendra Jha, 2013. "Economic Growth, Law, and Corruption: Evidence from India," Comparative Economic Studies, Palgrave Macmillan;Association for Comparative Economic Studies, vol. 55(2), pages 287-313, June.
    15. Rose-Ackerman, Susan, 1975. "The economics of corruption," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 4(2), pages 187-203, February.
    16. Pethe, Abhay & Gandhi, Sahil & Tandel, Vaidehi, 2011. "Assessing the Mumbai metropolitan region: a governance perspective," MPRA Paper 39354, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    17. Lambsdorff,Johann Graf, 2007. "The Institutional Economics of Corruption and Reform," Cambridge Books, Cambridge University Press, number 9780521872751, October.
    18. Shylashri Shankar & Raghav Gaiha & Raghbendra Jha, 2010. "Information and Corruption: The National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme in India," ASARC Working Papers 2010-02, The Australian National University, Australia South Asia Research Centre.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Hessami, Zohal, 2014. "Political corruption, public procurement, and budget composition: Theory and evidence from OECD countries," European Journal of Political Economy, Elsevier, vol. 34(C), pages 372-389.
    2. Blaise Gnimassoun, Joseph Keneck Massil, 2019. "Determinants of corruption: can we put all countries in the same basket?," European Journal of Comparative Economics, Cattaneo University (LIUC), vol. 16(2), pages 239-276, December.
    3. Blaise Gnimassoun & Joseph Keneck Massil, 2016. "Determinants of corruption: Can we put all countries in the same basket?," Working Papers hal-04141599, HAL.
    4. Zohal Hessami, 2013. "Corruption, Public Procurement, and the Budget Composition: Theory and Evidence from OECD Countries," Working Paper Series of the Department of Economics, University of Konstanz 2013-27, Department of Economics, University of Konstanz.
    5. Alice N. Sindzingre & Christian Milelli, 2010. "The Uncertain Relationship between Corruption and Growth in Developing Countries: Threshold Effects and State Effectiveness," EconomiX Working Papers 2010-10, University of Paris Nanterre, EconomiX.
    6. Gründler, Klaus & Potrafke, Niklas, 2019. "Corruption and economic growth: New empirical evidence," European Journal of Political Economy, Elsevier, vol. 60(C).
    7. Juan Carlos Henao & Carolina Isaza Espinosa, 2018. "Corrupción en Colombia Tomo 1 Corrupción, política y sociedad," Books, Universidad Externado de Colombia, Facultad de Derecho, number 1024, October.
    8. Glaeser, Edward L. & Saks, Raven E., 2006. "Corruption in America," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 90(6-7), pages 1053-1072, August.
    9. Ruba A. Aljarallah & Andrew Angus, 2020. "Dilemma of Natural Resource Abundance: A Case Study of Kuwait," SAGE Open, , vol. 10(1), pages 21582440198, January.
    10. Keith Blackburn & Gareth Downing, 2015. "Deconcentration, Corruption and Economic Growth," Centre for Growth and Business Cycle Research Discussion Paper Series 209, Economics, The University of Manchester.
    11. Olivier Armantier & Amadou Boly, 2008. "Can Corruption Be Studied in the Lab? Comparing a Field and a Lab Experiment," CIRANO Working Papers 2008s-26, CIRANO.
    12. Toke S. Aidt, 2011. "Corruption and Sustainable Development," Chapters, in: Susan Rose-Ackerman & Tina Søreide (ed.), International Handbook on the Economics of Corruption, Volume Two, chapter 1, Edward Elgar Publishing.
    13. Ruba Abdullah Aljarallah, 2020. "The Economic Impacts of Natural Resource Dependency in Gulf Countries," International Journal of Energy Economics and Policy, Econjournals, vol. 10(6), pages 36-52.
    14. Christian Bjørnskov, 2011. "Combating Corruption: On the Interplay between Institutional Quality and Social Trust," Journal of Law and Economics, University of Chicago Press, vol. 54(1), pages 135-159.
    15. Toke S. Aidt, 2009. "Corruption, institutions, and economic development," Oxford Review of Economic Policy, Oxford University Press and Oxford Review of Economic Policy Limited, vol. 25(2), pages 271-291, Summer.
    16. Qu, Guangjun & Sylwester, Kevin & Wang, Feng, 2018. "Anticorruption and growth: Evidence from China," European Journal of Political Economy, Elsevier, vol. 55(C), pages 373-390.
    17. Adriana Cordis, 2009. "Judicial checks on corruption in the United States," Economics of Governance, Springer, vol. 10(4), pages 375-401, November.
    18. De Rosa, Donato & Gooroochurn, Nishaal & Gorg, Holger, 2010. "Corruption and productivity : firm-level evidence from the BEEPS survey," Policy Research Working Paper Series 5348, The World Bank.
    19. Ghulam Shabbir & Mumtaz Anwar & Shahid Adil, 2016. "Corruption, Political Stability and Economic Growth," The Pakistan Development Review, Pakistan Institute of Development Economics, vol. 55(4), pages 689-702.
    20. Lurdes Martins & Jorge Cerdeira & Aurora A.C. Teixeira, 2020. "Does corruption boost or harm firms’ performance in developing and emerging economies? A firm‐level study," The World Economy, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 43(8), pages 2119-2152, August.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    Corruption; asymmetric and private information; private gains;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • D73 - Microeconomics - - Analysis of Collective Decision-Making - - - Bureaucracy; Administrative Processes in Public Organizations; Corruption
    • D82 - Microeconomics - - Information, Knowledge, and Uncertainty - - - Asymmetric and Private Information; Mechanism Design
    • K42 - Law and Economics - - Legal Procedure, the Legal System, and Illegal Behavior - - - Illegal Behavior and the Enforcement of Law

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:pra:mprapa:39306. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Joachim Winter (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/vfmunde.html .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.