Information Availability Measures in

Anti-Bribery Work

Tetyana Loskutova
PhD
Director, Futures Group
 Introduction
 Public procurement is often associated with bribery,
especially in developing countries.
 Foreign Corrupt Practices Act (FCPA) deals with
the issue of bribes given to the foreign government
officials by US persons operating abroad, their
employees, and certain US-listed entities.
 The purpose of this paper is to evaluate the
influence of different measures of information
availability on the likelihood of FCPA
investigations.
 Literature Review
 FOI laws have increased the perception of corruption in
developing countries while having no effect on
corruption in the rest of the world (Costa, 2012)
 Both bureaucrats and activists confirmed the usefulness
of Right to Information (RTI) laws in anti-corruption
work (Agrawal, 2012).
 Lio, Liu, and Ou (2011) found that the adoption of the
Internet has the propensity to reduce corruption;
however, they also found evidence that this propensity
has not yet been realised.
 Literature Review - 2
 The use of the Internet and cellphones is associated
with the reduction of the perception of corruption
but only if political pluralism is also present (Relly,
2011,2012).
 The lack of reported facts makes corruption easy
and investigation nearly impossible (Zaman and
Ionescu, 2016).
 The ability of citizens to comprehend and interpret
information mediates the relationship between
information and anti-corruption work (Costa, 2012).
 Literature Review - 3
 Balmas (2014) found that higher levels of exposure
to inaccurate information as associated with higher
trust in such information. The effort to supply
accurate information to the public can be costly.
 Overall, the review of the previous research
indicated that information is a multi-faceted
phenomenon that cannot be assessed as a single
measure.
 Methodology
 A granular approach to the relationship of
information availability and corruption through
using seven RTI indicators in conjunction with
the extent of Corporate Transparency and
Disclosure Index was used.
 Human Development Index (HDI) was used as a
composite indicator of income, health, and
education level in a country.
Measure Description Range Date
Corruption CPI is a complex index based on a 0-100 2017
Perceptions combination of perceptions of business people
Index and expert opinion. CPI focuses particularly on
the perceptions of corruption in the public
sector.
Nominal GDP is the total sum of gross value added by >=0 2017
Gross all residents of the country. GDP includes
Domestic product taxes and excludes subsidies.
Product
(GDP)
HDI Index measuring the level of human 0-1 2016
development in a country based on education,
health, and the level of income.
Number of Number of separately investigated FCPA 1-78 2016-
FCPA cases cases per country. 2017
Extent of The index measures the following dimensions 0-9 2017
Corporate of Corporate Transparency: disclosure of
Transparenc ownership stakes, compensation, audits and
y financial prospects.
Measure Description Range Date
Right of This index measures the level of regulatory 0-6 2017
Access right to access the information in general and
the information held by public authorities.
Reliability This index measures reliability and 0-8 2017
and transparency of electricity tariff information as
transparenc a critical measure of doing business in a
y of tariffs country.
Scope of The level to which the information is 0-8 2017
RTI accessible to every legal and physical person.
Sanctions The existence of sanctions for those 1-8 2017
and withholding information and protections for
Protections whistle-blowers.
Total RTI This is the sum of all values of RTI indicators. 0-150 2017
score
Disclosure Degree of disclosure of ownership and 0-10 2017
Index financial information.
Promotional Level of establishment of a central body for 0-16 2017
Measures promoting information access.
 Results
The first model was constructed on the full dataset
as:
Count ~ gdp + pm + rt + ra + sp + scope + di +
cti (1)
All the combinations of variables were tested until
a statistically significant model was found as:
Count = 0.0018 *gdp + 0.7322 *pm (2)
 GDP and Promotional Measures

Count = 0.0018 *gdp + 0.7322 *pm (2)

 Very high HDI Countries

ln(Count) = 0.2844 * ra+ (-0.2582 )*sp + 0.1310 *di (3)

 High HDI Countries

ln(Count) = 0.5313 * rt + 1.077*ra – 0.2112* scope (4)

 Medium HDI Countries

ln(Count) = -0.3124*sp+ 0.2584* di + 2.0947*score (6)

 Low HDI Countries

ln(Count) = 0.014 * total_inf (7)

 Conclusions
 The stratification of the data based on the level of human
development allowed a better understanding of what
measures are particularly effective in different societies.
 The findings indicate that in more developed societies,
the citizens are more prone to use information in the anti-
bribery work. In lesser developed societies, the citizens
are more dependent on the intervention of the
government.
 A longitudinal study that compares the situation before
and after the implementation of informational measures
is proposed for future research.