Measurement of bribery
The Berlin-based,Transparency International,pub-
lishes annually,an index of corruption which ranks
countries on the basis of how corrupt(in the form of
bribe taking)they are perceived to be.Known as the
Corruption Perception Index(CPI),it draws on 17
different polls and surveys from 10 independent
institutions carried out among businesspersons,risk
analysts,the general public,and country experts.
Among the sources of information that go into
creating the index include the Economist Intelli-
gence Unit(Country Risk Service and Country
Forecasts),Gallup International,the Institute for
Management Development(World Competitiveness
Yearbook),the Political and Economic Risk Con-
sultancy in Hong Kong(Asian Intelligence issue),
Political Risk Services(International Country Risk
Guide),the World Bank(World Development
Report and Private Sector Survey),and the World
Economic Forum(Global Competitiveness Survey)
collected over the previous three years.Over the
years,more and more countries have been assessed
and the annual announcement of the CPI is received
with great interest.The CPI has become the most
visible and systematic measure of perceived bribe
taking in the world.By being a single composite
score,the CPI has increased the reliability of the data
of each individual source.The index ranges from 10
to 0 where 10 represents the least amount of bribery
and 0 the most.For the list of countries ranked
annually,visit Transparency International’s website
at www.transparency.org.
The CPI is the best numerical information that is
currently available about bribery in and across
countries.It should be stressed that this index mea-
sures perception,rather than actual levels of bribery.
It also does not measure the corrupt practices of
businesspersons in their own home country;it fo-
cuses on foreigner’s perception of how prone is a
country and its officials to ask for bribes.The index
also does not distinguish between petty and grand
corruption or political from business-related cor-
ruption.However,the CPI has rapidly emerged as a suitable data set for academic research(Husted,
1999).