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Six Strategies to Fight Corruption

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Having looked at some of the ways in which corruption damages the social and institutional fabric of a country , we now turn to reform options open to governments to reduce corruption and mitigate its effects. Rose-Ackerman ( 1998 ) recommends a two-pronged strategy aimed at increasing the benefits of being honest and the costs of being corrupt, a sensible combination of reward and punishment as the driving force of reforms. This is a vast subject. We discuss below six complementary approaches. 1. Paying civil servants well Whether civil servants are appropriately compensated or grossly underpaid will clearly affect motivation and incentives. If public sector wages are too low, employees may find themselves under pressure to supplement their incomes in “unofficial” ways. Van Rijckeghem and Weder ( 2001 ) did some empirical work showing that in a sample of less developed countries, there is an inverse relationship between the level of public sector wages and the inc