Private tutoring is an important phenomenon that has arisen in a wide variety of countries and can have significant educational, social, and economic ramifications. However, due to the fact that it is a service provided outside the planning and...

Several authors claim to provide evidence that government corruption is less severe in small rather than large countries. Knack and Azfar demonstrate in this book that this relationship is an artifact of sample selection. Most corruption indicators...

Why is corruption - defined here as the misuse of public office for private gain - perceived to be more widespread in some countries than others? Different theories associate cross-national variation in the extent of corruption with particular...

The author reviews the overwhelming statistical evidence that countries with high levels of corruption experience poor economic performance. Corruption hinders economic development by reducing domestic investment, discouraging foreign direct...

This volume describes the results of a Regional Conference of Transparency International representatives, held in Bratislava, in April 1999. It is structured into three main parts. Firstly, the Declaration for Municipal Reform, set by the...

The relationship between decentralization of government activities and the extent of rent extraction by private parties is an important element in the recent debate on institutional design. The theoretical literature makes ambiguous predictions about...

Corruption ranks, together with effective democratic representation, as the most important problem facing local governments. The challenge facing local governments is to develop innovative ways of building effective, accountable, and transparent...

The movement toward decentralization is gathering momentum. In this context, the important costs of corruption are being explicitly recognised, as is the urgent need to prevent corruption, raise city revenues, improve service delivery, stimulate...

Data that can be used to inform policy decisions are typically scarce in low-income countries, where standard policy prescriptions are less likely to apply. But if strategically designed, a survey can help induce policy change by pointing directly to...

In this article, the author surveys the World Bank's efforts in combating the myth surrounding corruption, as well as the Bank's work in creating diagnostic tools, disseminating survey results, and implementing effective anti-corruption strategies...