Measuring corruption in developed countries

The complex issue of corruption has attracted much attention over the last 20 years. The problem was analyzed mostly in the context of developing and transition countries, though not only the recent financial crisis showed the severity of corruption also in the world's most developed countries. This thesis analyzes twelve currently available corruption assessments for a cross section of 39 developed countries in the period 2007-2010. The thesis categorizes these assessments into three basic generations and characterizes the weaknesses and limitations of particular methods. The analysis is based on determination of relationship between individual corruption measures and recognizes specific aspects of corruption actually measured by particular indices. With the exception of strictly opinion poll-based corruption indices, the first and the second generation of corruption indices correlate well for a set of developed countries. This indicates that the sector specific indices, e.g. expenditure corruption assessment, are in analyzed countries closely related to the overall political corruption levels. An applied hierarchical cluster analysis gives better picture of otherwise inconsistent developed countries corruption rankings and divides countries into ten homogeneous groups. However, the analysis..