Corruption is increasingly placed on top of the agenda of national governments and supra national institutions, such as the OECD, UN or the World Bank. A necessary condition for promoting sustainable economic growth is the pre-existence of a stable political system which is able to control corruption. Corruption, however, is a very complex issue, associated with institutional and cultural specificities, personality traits related to individualistic values, and criminal personalities. In this book the social, political and economic realities that prevail in particular settings are viewed from an interdisciplinary, multidimensional, and a multi country perspective. This book is divided into three parts. The first part presents a comprehensive, theoretical and empirical framework of corruption with an overview of literature on economic growth and corruption. Part two, encompasses the in-depth analysis of several countries, ranging from middle corrupted contexts like Portugal, to highly corrupted countries including Serbia, Russia, Thailand and China- the latter viewed from the perspective of firms from a very low corruption country such as Finland. The final part explores the prevention and control of corruption, looking at the public sector in Thailand and fighting corruption with different strategies. This volume is of the interest of those who study international economics, development economics or organised crime.

Fighting and preventing corruption requires therefore an understanding of the social, political and economic realities that prevail in particularly settings, viewed from an interdisciplinary, multidimensional, and a multi country perspective. It also requires scholars to distinguish between different types of corruption, ranging from petty bribery to system-wide state capture through networks of interconnected players. In this book we seek to address these challenges and contribute to an interdisciplinary and more pluralistic view of the corruption phenomena.

The book is divided in three parts. The first part presents a comprehensive, theoretical and empirical framework of corruption. Specifically, the first chapter overviews the literature on economic growth and corruption, presenting a bibliometric account of the main research contributions in the field. The second chapter, using a sample of 122 countries in the period 1990-2006 demonstrates, in a setting where the relation between globalization and corruption is non-linear, that Sub-Saharan African countries suffer more seriously from globalization.

Part II, encompasses the in depth analysis of several countries, ranging from middle corrupted contexts (Portugal Chapter 3), to highly corrupted countries such as Serbia (Chapter 4), Russia (Chapter 5), Thailand (Chapter 6) and China (Chapter 7), this latter viewed from the perspective of firms from a very low corruption country (Finland).

In Chapter 3, the authors demonstrated that grand corruption is associated with the organizational context, which enables specific practices and which elicits negative judgments, whereas petty corruption is associated with structural factors, above all, poverty, which also triggers specific practices. Generally, and adopting a more psychological and sociological perspective the authors show that in a middle corrupted context (Portugal), corruption is associated with cultural specificities (i.e. complacency), personality traits related to individualistic values, and criminal personalities.

A more institutional and legal perspective is adopted in Chapter 4 where the author describes various forms of political corruption related to political party funding and their particular features in post-transitional countries. Moreover, numerous cases from Serbian practice in the area of financing of political parties are illustrated, being uncovered the need of monitoring by free press and of having an informed civil society. Still in a post-transitional country context, Chapter 5 provides evidence of corruption in public procurement in Russia. The author treats the hypothesis of buyer's quasi-corruptive behavior: the bona fide contracting authority is trying to limit the competition in the favor of the selected supplier but for avoiding the risks which stems from the application of English auction for purchasing of the differentiated goods."