Research On The Causes Of Officials’Corruption

Since the beginning of reform and opening up, China has made great achievementson its economic development, but the problem of officials’ corruption is also veryserious. At the same time, the local governments expand rapidly, whatever measured bythe number of officials and the public expenditures. Then what is the impact ofgovernment size on corruption, and is China’s anti-corruption activities effective?Recognizing these problems is very important to controlling the corruption.In this paper, based on the social phenomenon, we show the effects of governmentsize and anti-corruption on the level of corruption firstly. Then through the theories ofbehavioral economics and corruption spreading mechanisms, we analyze thecorruption’s reason of individuals and groups. After that, we give some relatedhypothesizes which will be examined in our empirical analysis. Our study based on120cities in China has shown that the expansion of the officials does improve the level ofcorruption, and the governments’ regulation is one of the main sources of corruption. AsChina’s judicial system is not totally independent, increasing the judicial inputs isn’thelpful to controlling the corruption, and China’s anti-corruption activities also havelittle effect on reducing the level of corruption. In addition, we find that the degree ofeconomic openness is higher, the level of corruption is lower. Based on these empiricalresults and China’s actual conditions, we give some suggestions which is helpful toreduce the officials’ corruption.The innovation of this dissertation is manifested in the following facets: Firstly,compared with the domestic research, we use a more reasonable index to measuring thelevel of corruption. Secondly, the government size and anti-corruption effectiveness willbe brought into our empirical analysis at the same time, most researches didn’t considerthe China’s anti-corruption effectiveness in the empirical analysis. Thirdly, our data isbased on China’s cities, not based on the states or provinces. Finally, we also try toprovide a microeconomic foundation for our empirical analysis, this will make ourempirical more reasonable and creditable.