Corruption

Corruption undermines the effectiveness of a market-based system in a variety of ways, diverting resources, distorting incentives, raising the costs of doing business, undermining business competition and efficiency, and creating uncertainty for investment. Corruption also both discourages profit-seeking and often impedes it. Small types of corruption (like the bribes one may have to pay at the airport or to an administrative official) create inefficiencies that slow down the agility of businesses, raise costs and make it more difficult to cultivate a new business. Big forms of corruption (for example, business appropriation) create limits to financial success and others (like large bribes to enter an industry or win a license) create entry barriers and lower prospective returns. All forms can make a country's system dysfunctional and create uncertainty around doing business in a given country. In all these ways corruption undermines productivity and the capacity of a society to realize its potential.

腐败以各种方式破坏市场制度的有效性，分散资源，扭曲激励措施，提高经营成本，破坏企业竞争和效率，造成投资不确定性。腐败也既劝阻谋利又经常阻碍。小型腐败（例如在机场或行政官员可能需要支付的贿赂）会导致效率低下，从而降低企业的敏捷性，提高成本，使其难以培育新业务。大型腐败形式（例如企业拨款）对财务成功和其他（如大额贿赂进入行业或获得许可证）创造了限制，创造了进入壁垒，降低了预期回报。所有形式都可能使一个国家的制度发生功能失调，并在一个特定国家开展业务造成不确定性。在所有这些方面，腐败会破坏生产力和社会实现其潜力的能力。

To measure corruption, we combine Transparency International's measures of corruption across countries with three sub-indices from the World Economic Forum's competitiveness index: "diversion of public funds," "irregular payments and bribes," and "favoritism in decisions of government officials." These measures help us capture the different types of corruption (big and small). The pieces of our corruption indicator are shown in the table below. When we look at these measures we see that poorer countries tend to have higher degrees of corruption. That's for a number of reasons we won't explore in depth here, including fewer opportunities for wealth creation, entrenched ways of operating that may have once been part of a different, non-market based system, or weaker rule of law. Businessmen and investors will likely put up with a certain degree of corruption to operate in an emerging country that is otherwise competitive. But if that country has an exceptionally high degree of corruption relative to countries of similar income, it is no doubt going to weigh on the decision to do business in that country. Once excluding the effect of income, our gauge of corruption is 58% correlated to historical future growth in income per capita. Notably, the relationship is slightly negative without this adjustment. Along with our measures of bureaucracy and the rule of law, this gauge helps us triangulate the picture of how hard it is to do business in a country.

为了衡量腐败现象，我们将透明国际的各项腐败措施与世界经济论坛的竞争力指数有三个分项指标：“公共资金的转移”，“不正当的付款和贿赂”以及“政府官员的偏袒”等三个指标。这些措施有助于我们捕捉不同类型的腐败（大小）。我们的腐败指标的部分如下表所示。当我们看这些措施时，我们看到较贫穷的国家往往会有更高的腐败程度。这是因为我们在这里不深入的一些原因，包括创造财富的机会较少，根深蒂固的经营方式可能曾经是不同的，非市场的制度，或较弱的法治。商人和投资者可能会出现一定程度的腐败，在具有竞争力的新兴国家经营。但是，如果那个国家相对于收入相似的国家来说，这个国家的腐败程度非常高，那么这个决定在这个国家做生意的决定无疑是无可厚非的。一旦排除收入的影响，我们对腐败的衡量与人均收入的未来增长率呈58％的相关性。值得注意的是，没有这种调整，这种关系略显负面。随着我们的官僚主义和法治的措施，这个量表有助于我们对在一个国家做生意的难度进行三角测量。

Before taking into account the income level of countries, Singapore again looks best, with Japan, the English- speaking developed world, and Germany also near the top. Most emerging countries are toward the bottom of our rankings, which is to be expected given the relationship between corruption and income levels we have discussed. When we exclude how income levels are related to corruption, Latin American countries and the European periphery are at the bottom of our ratings. Italy and Greece stand out as having the highest degree of corruption of any of the countries we look at, followed by Russia and Argentina just behind. Italy is weak across all measures, especially given how wealthy it is, and particularly with regard to favoritism by government officials. India and China both face significant impediments from their levels of corruption. But when we consider their levels of corruption relative to their levels of income, their corruption is not exceptional; in fact, it’s lower than we would expect. Even after considering income levels, many developed countries still rate high, Singapore in particular, but also commonwealth countries, Japan, and Germany. The US rates in the bottom third after considering its income.

在考虑到国家的收入水平之前，新加坡再次看起来最好，日本是英语发达国家，德国也接近顶峰。大多数新兴国家正处于我们排名的最低点，这是因为我们讨论的腐败与收入水平之间的关系。当我们排除收入水平与腐败有关的情况时，拉丁美洲国家和欧洲边缘地位是我们评级的底线。意大利和希腊脱颖而出，因为任何一个国家的腐败程度最高，其次是俄罗斯和阿根廷。意大利在所有措施上都是薄弱的，特别是考虑到富裕程度，特别是在政府官员的偏袒方面。印度和中国都面临着腐败程度的重大障碍。但是，当我们考虑到他们的腐败程度相对于他们的收入水平，他们的腐败不是例外;实际上它低于我们的预期。即使考虑到收入水平，许多发达国家仍然高居新加坡，特别是新加坡，也是英联邦，日本和德国。考虑到美国的收入，美国的利率在三分之一以下。