Who gets caught for corruption when corruption is pervasive? Evidence from China’s anti-bribery blacklist

TY - JOUR

T1 - Who gets caught for corruption when corruption is pervasive? Evidence from China’s anti-bribery blacklist

AU - Zhou, Liming

AU - Jin, Zhangfeng

AU - Wang, Zheng

N1 - Copyright: © 2016 Informa UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis Group.

PY - 2017

Y1 - 2017

N2 - This article empirically investigates why in a corruption-pervasive country only a minority of the firms get caught for bribery while the majority get away with it. By matching manufacturing firms to a blacklist of bribers in the healthcare sector of a province in China, we show that the government-led blacklisting is selective: while economically more visible firms are slightly more likely to be blacklisted, state-controlled firms are the most protected compared to their private and foreign competitors. Our finding points to the fact that a government can use regulations to impose its preferences when the rule of law is weak and the rule of government is strong.

AB - This article empirically investigates why in a corruption-pervasive country only a minority of the firms get caught for bribery while the majority get away with it. By matching manufacturing firms to a blacklist of bribers in the healthcare sector of a province in China, we show that the government-led blacklisting is selective: while economically more visible firms are slightly more likely to be blacklisted, state-controlled firms are the most protected compared to their private and foreign competitors. Our finding points to the fact that a government can use regulations to impose its preferences when the rule of law is weak and the rule of government is strong.

KW - Corruption

KW - bibery

KW - healthcare

KW - China

U2 - 10.1080/13504851.2016.1181826

DO - 10.1080/13504851.2016.1181826

M3 - Article

SN - 1350-4851

VL - 24

SP - 258

EP - 263

JO - Applied Economics Letters

JF - Applied Economics Letters

IS - 4

ER -