Cleanliness is better for private sector growth.
A Hong Kong based journalist explains why. These are not good days for the old argument, widely popular even five years ago, that a little corruption in developing countries is probably good for greasing the wheels of commerce. Of all the testing grounds for this theory, often associated with academic thinkers such as Nathaniel Leff and Francis Lui, Asia was supposed to be the most fertile. Now, with parts of Asia beginning to recover from one of the fastest destructions of wealth seen anywhere in the world outside of wartime, many in the region are reconsidering the merits of this argument, just as academics are concluding that corruption is not such a great economic lubricant after all. Even in countries closer in spirit to the West that appeared to be adopting free-market reforms, the evidence is that competitiveness and corruption do not mix.