Corrupción como barrera de entrada

En Voxeu un interesante estudio de Campos/Estrin/Protos. Este es el resumen

when there is little chance of avoiding the payment of a bribe and when bribes are collected regularly and frequently – namely in the case of a very effective system of corruption and/or bad institutions – incumbent firms tend to perform better. This happens because a profit-maximising bureaucrat would then prefer to give more oligopoly power to incumbent firms by allowing fewer new firms into the market. On the other hand, in a system where there is a good chance of avoiding paying bribes, a bureaucrat will prefer to share the risk across firms and will allow more firms into the market….

About 70% of respondents report that corruption is a major obstacle to firm entry while only about 30% report that corruption is a major obstacle to firm growth. This suggests a stark distinction between how incumbent firms view the role of corruption with respect to growth and entry. Corruption seems crucial as a mechanism to deter entry of new competitors but of less significance with respect to the operation and growth of incumbent firms…

The interpretation favoured here is that corruption is an important barrier to entry because it imposes substantial learning costs on entrepreneurs, new firms, and/or potential entrants.

Consequently, the importance of corruption to firm creation and destruction comes less from how much potential entrants have to pay in bribes, and more because potential entrants do not know how often they will have to pay bribes, how much do they will cost, and whether, how and when bribes can be successfully avoided.

Si el efecto es más importante en la entrada que en el crecimiento de las empresas, un bajo nivel de corrupción debe favorecer, especialmente, el dinamismo y el crecimiento de las economías por lo que los efectos de la corrupción pueden ser todavía más letales de lo que se pensaba sobre el desarrollo económico. Por otro lado, el dictador que controla la corrupción en su país reducirá los costes sociales de la corrupción pero ésta se convierte en un impuesto mucho más caro para las empresas que un verdadero impuesto porque el entrante tiene que averiguar, primero, a quién y cuánto tiene que pagar para acceder al mercado.