This report on trust and integrity in Europe was commissioned by the Dutch EU Presidency 2016 to a group of research institutes associated in the EU FP7 ANTICORRP project lead by Professor Alina Mungiu-Pippidi at the Hertie School of Governance in Berlin. The report argues that economic performance alone does not explain the sometimes dramatic […]
The gradual drop in public confidence in the EU since the beginning of the 2008 economic crisis indicates an erosion of the long-held belief among citizens and elites alike that European integration is the best option to secure a better future. But is it EU democracy that is being challenged here, or is democracy itself […]
What is to be done when an entire education system is corrupted, when universities sell cheap diplomas and the best academics move abroad? Corruption in the academy can be challenged by a ‘clean universities’ ranking and the power of press coverage.
This paper analyzes the relationship between the mode of international investment and institutional quality. Foreign investors from a capital-rich North can either purchase productive assets in a capital-poor South and transfer their capital within integrated multinational firms or they can form joint ventures with local asset owners. The South is ruled by an autocratic elite […]
This paper analyzes the influence of financial integration on institutional quality. We construct a dynamic political-economic model of an autocracy in which a ruling elite uses its political power to expropriate the general population. Although financial integration reduces capital costs for entrepreneurs and thereby raises gross incomes in the private sector, the elite may counteract […]