<p>Bribery is a concept which has appeared quite frequently in the media recently, but what constitutes a bribe and what factors can be used in determining if an individual case is actually a bribe? The purpose of this essay is to try and answer these questions through a study in which respondents were presented with different scenarios and were asked to determine whether a bribe had occurred and explain their reasoning. In the study, it was evident that the amount of money involved in a given case had a large impact on respondents’ determination of whether a bribe had occurred or not. The grey area that seems to exist between what is appropriate and inappropriate most likely stems from ambiguousness in Swedish law.</p>

Purpose: The purpose is to investigate the size of the shadow economy within the EU, by studying undeclared work, bribery and tax evasion in 28 Member States in 2013, and answer the question how to better combat shadow economy. Research design: The study is a quantitative research as it uses data from existing surveys and a report. The collected data is analyzed by multiplying the number of respondents with the percentage of the issue in each Member State. Calculating all three issues for 28 Member States presents the size of the shadow economy in the EU in 2013. Findings: Research has found that shadow economy is present within the EU. The study shows that the size of shadow economy in 2013 is 17,6 %. Amongst the three issues, tax evasion was more extensive than the other two issues. Besides regulation, there are other considerable factors that contribute to the gap in the shadow economy. The findings show that EU has taken measures to combat these issues. However, the study finds other measures to be needed to combat shadow economy. Contribution: This study contributes to the research of shadow economy within the EU by focusing on three issues: undeclared work, bribery and tax evasion. The study is supposed to raise awareness to not neglect the issues but rather combat them in a cross-border effort as shadow economy is not only affecting each Member States at national level but also at EU-level.

Masters in Public Administration - MPA / In this research report, I evaluate the role of the Directorate on Corruption and Economic Crime (DCEC) which was established by the Government of Botswana in 1994 to play a major role in the fight against corruption and economic crime in the country. I establish what led to the formation of the DCEC and assess whether the DCEC has met its aims and objectives. I also evaluate the legislation that gives the DCEC the powers to fight corruption and economic crime and ascertain if it is sufficient and effective. I explore the challenges and constraints faced by the DCEC, and assess the effectiveness of the three-pronged strategy adopted by it in combating corruption and economic crime in Botswana. I critically evaluate the successes and failures of the DCEC and find whether the public expectations for the DCEC have been met. / South Africa

En el presente trabajo, se analiza si la percepción de confianza afecta la probabilidad de sobornar a un funcionario público para el caso de Perú en el 2018. Asimismo, se investiga si otras características individuales aumentan la probabilidad de soborno. Para ello, se eligen cinco instituciones públicas con mayor tasa de admisión de soborno y con mayor tasa de respuesta entre los entrevistados. Se utiliza dos modelos probit binarios con distinta definición de corrupción. En el primero, se considera si la persona solo admite sobornar, y el segundo se considera si la persona admite o le solicitan soborno. Los resultados muestran que no existe suficiente evidencia para poder afirmar que existe una relación negativa entre ambas variables, pero se comprueba lo afirmado por la literatura con respecto a la relación entre la variable probabilidad de soborno y variables como edad, género, y educación. / In this paper, it is analyzed whether the perception of trust affects the probability of bribing a public official in Perú during 2018. In addition, it is investigated whether other individual characteristics increase the probability of bribery. For this, five public institutions with a higher bribe admission rate and with a higher response rate among the interviewees are chosen. Two probit models with different definition of corruption are used. The first one considers whether the person only admits to bribing, and the second one considers whether the person admits or if the public official requests bribery. The results show that there is not enough evidence to be able to affirm that there is a negative relationship between both variables, but it is verified what is stated by the literature regarding the relationship between the variable probability of bribery and variables such as age, gender, and education. / Trabajo de investigación

The thesis deals with latent criminality as a dynamic criminality phenomenon. The first chapter is dedicated to the scientific discipline of criminology, which examines criminality as a whole, criminality itself and terms which define criminality, such as scope, level, structure and dynamic. The second chapter deals directly with latent criminality. It lists all that is included in latent criminality and its relation to registered criminality. The chapter describes the possible causes and brings closer all the methods for examining it. The most common of those are victimization method and self-reporting investigation. One of the main causes of crime latency is the victim's failure to report. The third chapter is therefore dedicated to crime victims. It lists the differences between a victim and an injured party and describes the relation between victim and perpetrator. This chapter also ties to the victim's consent with prosecution, which can be influenced by the aforementioned relation to the perpetrator. In the fourth chapter, criminality is divided into individual types. Apart from definitions of the different criminality types, such as property offences, violent, moral and economic criminality, the thesis here details the statistical indicators of these criminality types (number of crimes...

University of Macau / Faculty of Law

published_or_final_version / Sociology / Master / Master of Social Sciences

Preferences are fundamental to decision making and play an important role in artificial intelligence. Our research focuses on three group of problems based on the preference formalism Answer Set Optimization (ASO): preference aggregation problems such as computing optimal (near optimal) solutions, strategic behaviors in preference representation, and learning ranks (weights) for preferences. In the first group of problems, of interest are optimal outcomes, that is, outcomes that are optimal with respect to the preorder defined by the preference rules. In this work, we consider computational problems concerning optimal outcomes. We propose, implement and study methods to compute an optimal outcome; to compute another optimal outcome once the first one is found; to compute an optimal outcome that is similar to (or, dissimilar from) a given candidate outcome; and to compute a set of optimal answer sets each significantly different from the others. For the decision version of several of these problems we establish their computational complexity. For the second topic, the strategic behaviors such as manipulation and bribery have received much attention from the social choice community. We study these concepts for preference formalisms that identify a set of optimal outcomes rather than a single winning outcome, the case common to social choice. Such preference formalisms are of interest in the context of combinatorial domains, where preference representations are only approximations to true preferences, and seeking a single optimal outcome runs a risk of missing the one which is optimal with respect to the actual preferences. In this work, we assume that preferences may be ranked (differ in importance), and we use the Pareto principle adjusted to the case of ranked preferences as the preference aggregation rule. For two important classes of preferences, representing the extreme ends of the spectrum, we provide characterizations of situations when manipulation and bribery is possible, and establish the complexity of the problem to decide that. Finally, we study the problem of learning the importance of individual preferences in preference profiles aggregated by the ranked Pareto rule or positional scoring rules. We provide a polynomial-time algorithm that finds a ranking of preferences such that the ranked profile correctly decided all the examples, whenever such a ranking exists. We also show that the problem to learn a ranking maximizing the number of correctly decided examples is NP-hard. We obtain similar results for the case of weighted profiles.

Title: Protection against corruption and bribery and their prevention Abstract This thesis deals with corruption and ways of its prevention. Initial chapter describes phenomenon of corruption in society, defines it and its Subchapter contains kinds of corruption. I try to explain the cause of origin of the corruption and its development phases in Chapter Two. Following Chapter Three is focused on measurement of corruption level and on existing corruption measurement methods also. This chapter concerns with description of Corruption Perception Index (CPI) published by Transparency International. The most important part of this diploma thesis is Chapter Four. This chapter is trying to find the suitable preventive measures that could reduce occurrences of corruption. Because this topic is very voluminous, Subchapter One is focused on preventive anti-corruption measures in subsequent three areas: legislative process (I describe much discussed topic of lobbing today in this part), conflict of interests and corruption in public administration. I try to describe particular measures that can reduce creating of corruption opportunities. Subchapter Two contains legislation of the corruption with put emphasis on anti-corruption tools of criminal law. It describes bribery crimes especially. Chapter Five explores ways...

This doctoral thesis deals with the selected criminal aspects of corruption pointing out the possibilities to sanction its most severe forms by means of the Czech criminal law. From the substantive point of view, the core of the thesis is the analysis of the bribery crimes and the thorough analysis of their selected elements, which can bring about interpretative and related application problems. It also refers to the issue of corruption in the private sector and the manner in which the Czech national legislation of corruption crimes copes with a requirement for its sanctioning, which follows from international commitments. In terms of procedural aspects, the thesis focuses on certain particulars of detection, investigation and evidence procedure relating to corruption criminality. Corruption criminality is regarded as latent criminality and in its most serious forms it is also connected to organized crime, which consequently requires application of specific means and methods in criminal procedure. However, in the course of their realization they are predominantly connected with an interference with individual's fundamental rights, so, as a reaction to that, a consistent legislation of conditions for their realization ought to be adopted. The thesis points out the shortcomings or problematic...