Corrupt intermediaries in international business transactions: between make, buy and reform

Johann Graf Lambsdorff ()

European Journal of Law and Economics, 2013, vol. 35, issue 3, 349-366

Abstract: Attempts to deter corruption have little recognized the operation of intermediaries. This study takes a New Institutional Economic-perspective, supported by a variety of case studies, to identify firms’ choices of when to engage corrupt intermediaries (buy) and how to approach reform. It argues that firms should be held unbendingly liable for the operation of their intermediaries. Reform may also focus on certifying “good” intermediaries and holding the certifier liable for the performance of its agents. Prohibiting intermediaries is not advisable, as intermediation can be either arranged in-house (make) or mixed with legal services. Registration and auditing of intermediaries provides a more promising avenue for reform. Legislators should balance the additional regulatory burden by granting a wage premium to registered intermediaries and denying legal recourse to unregistered competitors. Copyright Springer Science+Business Media, LLC 2013

Keywords: Trust; Opportunism; Enforcement; Liability; Regulation; Vertical integration; L14; K42 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2013
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (8)

Downloads: (external link)
http://hdl.handle.net/10.1007/s10657-010-9214-7 (text/html)
Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:kap:ejlwec:v:35:y:2013:i:3:p:349-366

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
http://www.springer.com/journal/10657

DOI: 10.1007/s10657-010-9214-7

Access Statistics for this article

European Journal of Law and Economics is currently edited by Jürgen Georg Backhaus, Giovanni B. Ramello and Alain Marciano

More articles in European Journal of Law and Economics from Springer
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Sonal Shukla () and Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing ().