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The purpose of this paper is to identify the place of kleptocracy and foreign corruption within the broader framework of financial crime. This facilitates understanding the importance of kleptocracy and foreign corruption as social problems. Two other aims are to better understand the most problematic components of a kleptocratic network and the most effective combatants of that network. A subsequent goal is to offer solutions from a broad range of interventions, including policy, technology, education, research and collaborative efforts.

Theoretical economic concepts are used to analyze the importance of kleptocracy and foreign corruption. A small in-depth survey of 15 experts is conducted to identify the most problematic components of kleptocratic networks and the most effective combatants of those networks. The proposed solutions are based on a combination of argumentation, econometric developments, application of trends in related fields and material from in-depth surveys.

This paper identifies kleptocracy and foreign corruption as one of the most, if not the most, devastating financial crime according to its impact on the total marginal utility of wealth. Experts identify foreign kleptocrats or corrupt foreign government officials as the most problematic entities in kleptocratic networks and the most effective combatant is identified as the US Department of Justice. By adding up fines and asset forfeiture related to corruption, penalties are found to be a small fraction of the problem in terms of monetary magnitude.

The paper does not attempt to make causal claims because of the nature of the paper’s purpose and methodology.

The paper offers suggestions and methods for academic researchers who may wish to pursue a research agenda that is empirical and forensic with the aim of combatting kleptocracy and foreign corruption. The paper describes how information on kleptocracy and foreign corruption can be implemented into business and economics curriculum.

Kleptocracy and foreign corruption are important problems, and creative solutions are desperately needed.

The paper shows how understanding and combatting kleptocracy and foreign corruption can be considered an interdisciplinary activity, touching on fields including technology, economics, business, ethics, education, law, policy, statistics and research methods.

This study researched how corruption affects the attraction of foreign direct investment (FDI). With the help of a qualitative methodology, the results of the analysis show that firms headquartered in countries where corruption is high have an advantage when operating in a foreign country with a similar institutional environment. The reason for this advantage is that such firms may possess knowledge of how to cope with the arbitrary and pervasive dimensions of corruption at home. On the other hand, firms from countries with lower corruption levels than the host country are more affected by corruption in a highly corrupt host country. Finally, even though this study found evidence that all firms operating in a highly corrupt country might participate in corrupt deals, those headquartered in highly corrupt countries are more willing to do so. This claim is based on the fact that firms from less corrupt countries might face stronger pressures from their headquarters to not engage in corrupt deals, whereas firms from more corrupt countries might not encounter such pressures.

This study examines the contingent impact of corporate anti-corruption policies on multinational enterprises’ foreign investment strategy. The authors propose that the differences in foreign investment motives will moderate the assumed deterrent effect of anti-corruption policies. Our analysis of overseas production investments by Japanese firms (2011–2017) supports some of the hypotheses. The authors find that the deterrent effect of anti-corruption policies may be diminished when a new subsidiary has an efficiency-seeking purpose. Conversely, the deterrent effect is more prominent when a new subsidiary has a competence-creating purpose. These results not only contribute to the research on control of corruption in international business, but also have implications for research on corporate self-regulation more generally.

The purpose of this paper is to examine the effect of foreign aid on corruption in Sub-Saharan African (SSA) countries. Foreign aid is aimed to promote economic growth by complementing the recipient country’s shortfall of financial resource. However, if the recipient country’s quality of governance and institutions is poor, the process of growth will be undermined. Since foreign aid to SSA countries has been increasing substantially in recent years, it is imperative to explore its impact on the level of corruption in the SSA countries.

The paper opted to use a Quantile regression (QR) approach to examine the impact of foreign aid on corruption. The data cover from the year 2000 to 2010 for 42 Sub-Saharan countries. QR is appropriate to achieve the stated objective because the method enables to examine the effect of aid on at different level of corruption.

The paper provides empirical insights on the impact of foreign aid on corruption level in SSA countries. The finding indicates that foreign aid has reduction effect on the corruption level of SSA countries. The effect is likely to be greater in nations that experience a higher level of corruption. The findings further reveal that aid from different bilateral sources has different effect on corruption. As a whole, the findings are statistically significant and robust to alternative measure of corruption.

Since the study just focus on Sub-Saharan African countries, the research findings may lack generalization to the entire African countries or poor developing countries that are receiving substantial amount of foreign aid. Therefore, future research should incorporate all the African countries or all poor developing countries.

Since the empirical findings reveals that aid reduces the corruption level and aid from different bilateral source have different effect on corruption, it is important to establish more cooperation between donor countries in allocating aid. The conditions attached to aid should be, among other things, be related with improvement of governance and institutional environment. Allocation of aid should be selective such that countries in institutional quality should be among the important criteria for a country to qualify for aid.

This paper fulfills the need to study the relationship between foreign aid and corruption in the case of SSA countries. The aid-corruption nexus is relatively under explored issue especially in the case African countries.

The purpose of this paper is to examine how firms’ characteristics related to globalization affect their perception on corruption and actual experiences in bribery. It focuses on two indicators of globalization, namely, foreign ownership and export, and confines the scope to developing economies.

This analysis uses firm-level data with observation over 60,000 collected from 94 developing economies. The paper employs the probit model to examine how firm characteristics related to globalization affect corruption perception (CP) and incidence.

The empirical results reveal that for foreign-invested companies, there is a substantial discrepancy between the perceived corruption and the actual. Although they are involved in bribery as frequently as, or less frequently than local firms, they have greater CPs. Exporting firms are more frequently solicited for bribes, but the effect disappears when time spent for government contact is controlled for. Consequently, foreign investment partly contributes to the corruption control, but the export orientation of firms rather aggravates corruption due to regulative environments in developing economies.

This study provides policy implications that the corruption control through globalization requires streamlining of administration procedure related to foreign investment or trade and, thus, shortening time to deal with public officials. In addition, governments need to emphasize the importance of foreign investment and prevent unethical practices mediated by local partners.

The greatest novelty of this paper lies in using firm level data instead of country level unlike most of the literature. Moreover, the authors focus on firms only in developing economies. As well, unlike most studies using only perception indicators as the proxy of corruption, this paper considers both CPs and actual incidence, and compares each other.

The purpose of this paper is to examine the implications of foreign bribery and perceptions that bribery is just a cost of doing business in Africa in light of recent reports and developments in the global attempt to curb bribery and corruption.

The research relied on primary data from anti-corruption legislation, surveys and monitoring reports and secondary data from publicly available information, journal articles and media reports to analyse recent developments in the fight against corruption with a special focus on Africa.

The research findings and analysis suggest that foreign bribery, which is illegal but largely carried out with impunity and perceived as a just a cost of doing business in Africa, has heavy costs on developing nations and on corporations and individuals that are prosecuted. Although much has been done to curb corruption, it seems active enforcement takes place in only a limited number of countries. There is still the need for enhanced enforcement by nations, increased societal awareness of effective measures against corruption and improved corporate compliance and responsibility.

The paper contributes practical insights into improvements and lapses in the fight against foreign bribery and corruption. Using recent and relevant analysis, the paper revisits the resilience of bribery and corruption in spite of increased anti-corruption actions and the need for multiple and varied measures. The information provided will be useful for governments, corporations and civil society in the fight against corruption, which requires constant multilateral action and examination.

In this exploratory study, we investigate the influence and effects of foreign government corruption on the market value and accounting outcomes of US multinational corporations. We use hierarchical cluster analysis on Transparency International Corruption scores to identify high and low corruption in both developed and developing countries. We argue that corruption obscures the true value of assets, makes valuation difficult, and reduces the potential gains of an acquisition. We find that firms acquiring assets from governments in high corruption environments tend to be larger in size and more intangible asset‐oriented than those expanding into low corruption environments. We find that the market responds much more favorably to expansions into low corruption environments than high corruption environments for both acquisitions and joint ventures. We find little evidence that long run accounting performance is adversely affected by government‐multinational relationships in high corruption environments. However, long run market value outcomes are negative for all firms entering into relationships with foreign governments, and are especially negative for joint venture relationships in developing high corruption environments. Finally, we find that systematic risk increases substantially for firms entering high corruption environments through trust‐based modes of expansions.

Corporate foreign bribery can have devastating consequences on communities and states. Over the past decade, there have been several promising developments, both national and international, that might increase the chances of victim states to receive remediation for the harm they suffered from foreign bribery. In particular, awareness has risen that victim states must be considered and new innovative items have been added to the toolbox of prosecutors in the fight against corruption that is assumed to also improve victim states’ standing in these procedures. This study aims to assess whether indeed victim states receive compensation through these novel procedures.

This study uses the three case studies of Switzerland, France and England and Wales for a comprehensive empirical and normative analysis of settlement agreements between defendants and prosecution authorities and of court jurisprudence.

This study shows that although de jure, it seems warranted to order the payment of remedies to victim states within domestic criminal proceedings, in practice, this rarely happens. A number of legal and practical obstacles account for this situation. This study, therefore, calls for the formulation of international guidelines containing the obligation to inform victim states of ongoing criminal proceedings on corporate foreign bribery, and guidance on how to identify the victim of this crime, as well as the damage caused.

This is the first contribution to verify whether claims that settlement agreements, recently introduced in England and Wales and France (and similar procedures are available in Switzerland), are beneficial for victim states in their quest to receive compensation. As this study shows that this is – not yet – the case in practice, this study proposes solutions that could lead the way for remediation of the harm caused by corporate corruption – and thereby, ultimately, to a more just outcome.

The purpose of this paper is to analyze the effects of corruption on investment and growth in 15 Middle East and North African (MENA) countries during the period 1985-2013. The authors used the International Country Risk Guide (ICRG) corruption index and conducted a panel cointegration analysis and Granger causality procedure to detect the dynamic relationships between the variables. Results indicate that corruption is a serious hurdle to economic growth in MENA countries since it affects investment activities and foreign direct investment inflows. In this case, policymakers have to implement effective anti-corruption strategies to avoid the epidemic of corruption.

The authors used the ICRG corruption index and conducted a panel cointegration analysis and Granger causality procedure to detect the dynamic relationships between the variables.

The main findings of this paper show that corruption is a serious hurdle to economic growth in MENA countries since it affects investment activities and foreign direct investment inflows. In this case, policymakers have to implement effective anti-corruption strategies to avoid the epidemic of corruption.

Unfortunately, in this study the authors did not use institutional variables to see their role and to judge whether governments should enhance the quality of institution and improve the corporate governance. This would be an opportunity to expand the sample and to conduct a new research in the near future to assess the real costs of corruption in the MENA region.

Governments and policymakers need to apprehend and admit that corruption is an important issue that deters foreign direct investment and threats the economic development and growth. Corruption can also deteriorate the infrastructure and increase the cost of doing business for both government and private sector which in turn will lower the growth (Tanzi and Doovi, 1997). It is worth recalling that during the past five years, a large part of the MENA region has witnessed multiple social upheavals. Hence, corruption must be tackled effectively and coherently to avoid further social tensions. It is the proper time to take serious steps and strict policy actions within a zero-tolerance framework to fight corruption and its widespread. New rules, laws, and anti-corruption procedures are among the most important initiatives that governments should implement. The governments should also increase the public awareness of the multiple drawbacks of corruption by publishing official reports and data on the most corrupted sector in the country. In this case, media will have a key role to diffuse the necessary information.

While most of the previous studies have employed GMM and OLS techniques, the authors opt a panel vector error correction model and cointegration technique to detect causality between the variables used in the model for the present study.

The purpose of this study is to examine the effect of foreign aid (FA) on corruption in selected Asian countries (Pakistan, India, Srilanka and Bangladesh) using the panel data from 2000 to 2014.

The author used Levin-Lin-Chu and Im-Pesaran-Shin panel unit root tests to check the stationary properties of the variables. The Pedroni’s and Kao panel cointegration approach was applied to analyze the variable’s long-run relationship. The author used panel dynamic ordinary least squares (PDOLS) and fully modified ordinary least squares (FMOLS) framework to estimate the coefficients of cointegrating vectors. Additionally, the panel granger causality test was performed to check the causal relationship between the variables.

The results from PDOLS and FMOLS indicate that FA has a significant negative impact on the level of corruption. This infers that the foreign assistance decrease the level of corruption perception index, hence, more corruption in the country.

Overall, the study fulfills the need to understand the aid-corruption nexus, particularly in the case of the Asian region.