Glenn Rogers (p)

José Cruz

Encompassing much of West Africa is a market for illicit payments at road checkpoints that is spatially defined by seaports and regional networks of road haulage corridors. This paper focuses on the functioning and evolution of this market and costs related to illicit payments. The negative effects on West African prosperity, food security, and democracy have been repeatedly highlighted in surveys of the private sector and in political initiatives to reduce checkpoints over the last 50 years.

The mixed methods used in this paper draw together case studies related to Niger’s export of onions, standardized road checkpoint data, historical anecdotes, and expert interviews since the 1990s on road checkpoints across West Africa. A proposed model is used to identify theoretical expectations and interpret the empirically observed historical record on outcomes and parameter magnitudes. Distinct historical periods are classified to create a sample of years with diverse price versus non-price determinants of onion export volume from Niger. Comparative statics scenarios based on these time periods and geographies examine the effects of supply-side versus demand-side shifts.

A key finding is that supply-side changes explain most of the longitudinal variation in market outcomes within geographic domains in the short and long term. Important demand-side differences are identifiable across geographic domains. This suggests that demand-side changes have been less important over time since the 1990s, but also that initiatives to reduce checkpoints within specific geographic domains have had successes. Empirical evidence measuring short-term as well as long-term changes in model parameters are broadly consistent with expectations. Theoretical market interactions, inconsistency between the model and observations, and data gaps inform priorities for future research.

The key conclusion is that Illicit payments at checkpoints can be analyzed as a spatial-temporal market with their own evolving geography, market institutions, and market performance outcomes. This preliminary synthesis of theory and evidence shows that non-price and demand-side causes of change in illicit payments can be identified across geographies and timeframes. This means that learning from previous checkpoint demand-reduction efforts can empirically move beyond case studies using before-and-after comparisons at a narrow point in time. Further research comparing the effects of the diverse initiatives to reduce these illicit payments at checkpoints on West African roads is needed to improve policies and actions to address this long-standing regional development challenge.

Iason - Filippos Kasapis (p), Dimitrios Karkanis

Glenn Rogers

The positive link between foreign investment and economic growth have been consistently examined and documented along the relevant literature. What mainly remains at stake is a clear assessment on the impact of institutional development on attracting international capitals, especially with regard to the linkages between political stability or corruption levels and FDI attraction. In the European transition countries, the collapse of the central planning system and the immediate adoption of the market economy model gradually led to increasing corruption, while at the same time the strengthening of nationalism came along with internal political instability. Predominantly, South American states experienced intense conflicts, between authoritarian and democratic regimes, which reduced social cohesion, such as currently being the case for Argentina and Colombia. In addition, the adoption of the Washington Consensus, aiming at liberalizing the national economies, hampered the ability of the state apparatus to cope with the high levels of corruption, while the endemic problem of organized crime persistently undermined the political stability of the region. The aim of the present study is to employ the Knowledge Capital (KK) model, in order to capture the differentiated effect of corruption and political stability on FDI attraction for two country samples from the European transition countries and Latin American geographical group during the period 2009-2021. The Ordinary Least Squares (OLS) and Poisson Pseudo-Maximum Likelihood (PPML) estimators are employed in order to carry out robustness checks. The FDI stock data derives from the Coordinated Direct Investment Survey (CDIS) of the IMF database. The corresponding data related to the variables of interests are provided by the World Governance Indicators (WGI) database, namely those of a) political stability and absence of violence/terrorism and b) control of corruption. Furthermore, the additional control variables which will be incorporated into the analysis, mainly represent the degree of trade liberalization, technological readiness and human capital levels, the corresponding data derived from the Heritage Foundation and the UNCTAD.

José Cruz (p)

Iason - Filippos Kasapis

Voter turnout has been studied in detail since the emergence of the rational choice question - why do people vote at all? In fact, the chance of one person changing the outcome of an election is practically zero. In the cost-benefit calculus of citizens, therefore, no one should vote no matter how much he or she cares. Given the difficulties of the rational model in explaining voter turnout, many social arguments have emerged in recent decades to understand the determinants of turnout. Drawing on this literature, this study examines the influence of corruption prevention, education, inequality and government efficacy on voter turnout in Portuguese municipal elections. Specifically, fuzzy-set Qualitative Comparative Analysis is used to determine whether these factors (individually or in combination) are necessary or sufficient conditions for high or low voter turnout in the elections of Portuguese municipal governments. Overall, the results indicate that in local elections, corruption mobilizes voters and inequality keeps voters away from the polls. It also shows that higher levels of education are not associated with higher voter turnout in populous and urban municipalities and that citizens respond to bad governance by voting.