Konstantin Sonin: The price of corruption

The amount of bribes is nothing compared to how much corruption costs the economy

Thank God that the "case of Ivan Golunov" on charges of an investigative journalist, falsified by law enforcement agencies, was terminated after three days - as it should have been. And even faster. The complex machine of the Russian state worked - as it periodically does in tense situations - as it should. Not in the way it should work under normal circumstances, but just in such a way that once again those who wish can say "our government is the only European."

Here is a detail I would like to point out as an economist. Very often, when they talk about the “price of corruption”, they talk about the amount of bribes paid by someone and received by someone. But the amount of bribes is nonsense, a spit compared to how much corruption costs the economy. In this episode, the price of the fact that corrupt generals and colonels ended up in the Ministry of Internal Affairs and the FSB is three days of the lives of tens of thousands of people who, instead of doing something, creating, developing, were worried about the journalist. This is the time and effort spent by dozens of editorial offices, that is, hundreds of journalists. This is the time and attention spent by hundreds of officials, from relatively minor to the most important. Spent simply because some generals doing business in their state duties tried to shut up a journalist talking about their corruption.

This is the price of corruption, this is minus some fractions of a percentage of economic growth. And from these shares, stagnation is formed.

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