LEG 388 Cultural Roots & Economic Consequences of Corruption

This course is designed for students wishing to gain an insight into one of the most important factors which affects the economic, political and social evolution of countries, often in a quite negative way: Corruption. Corruption is intended here as the abuse of Power for personal gains and encompasses behaviours like for example extortion of bribes, acceptance of bribes, influence of external agents on the behaviour of political representatives. These various aspects of Corruption will be analysed in-depth, taking care of expounding also their specific consequences on economic growth, on the capacity of a specific country to attract Foreign Direct Investment and on the social evolution of a given community.

Corruption will be presented as a culturally-embedded phenomenon. The historical, cultural and social underpinnings of Corruption in various countries will be highlighted, borrowing also from a relatively innovatory stream of literature called New Institutional Economics (NIE). The NIE studies the impact of specific habits and rules existing in a given environment on the economic system.