Lecture: ‘Introduce technology, to curb corruption’
Although eliminating corruption through incentives may become prohibitively expensive for countries like Pakistan, introducing technology and reducing the human interaction in various government departments could be an efficient way of reducing the level of corruption.
This was stated by Dr Waqar Wadho, an economist, while speaking on at “Corruption and Development: Perspective from Economic Theory”, organised by Sustainable Development Policy Institute (SDPI) here on Monday. He added corruption is the single major impediment to sustainable development and economic growth for developing countries like Pakistan.
He talked about his theoretical contributions on the endogenous determination of corruption and its repercussions, rationale and cost-effectiveness of incentive-based anti-corruption strategy and natural resource curse.
He argued that corruption depends on the size of unskilled labour force and level of education and a higher percentage of unskilled labour.
He added that corruption is a collusive mechanism. The higher interaction between government official and public is, the higher the rate of corruption will be.
He said that the corruptible person’s behaviour not only depends on wages, bribes and auditing, but also on the behaviour of his colleagues. If many of them are corrupt, it becomes less likely that the corrupt agent will be identified and punished.
Dr Waqar also presented his theory explaining why countries rich in natural resources perform poorly in growth and development. He proposed that by increasing access to education and political participation, countries can avoid a poverty-trap.
Published in The Express Tribune, July 20th, 2011.
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