Supply Side Determinants of Corruption in the Job Seeking Process in Afghanistan (Micro-level study)

Abstract

Corruption has been one of the main causes of misfortune and a fundamental barrier toward development in the recent history of Afghanistan, after the 9/11 attack. The prevalent practice of bribery with huge influx of international aid to the country and absolute authority of officials in charge of the governmental offices have provided a favorable condition for corruption, particularly in the recruitment processes. International organizations’ reports and policy briefs provide surface-level overview indicating the existence of corruption in the employment processes and different governmental sectors of the country. However, in this research, the supply side incentives for corruption in the job market at individual level have been taken under investigation. This research tries to analyze and empirically test the most significant push-factors leading to frequent exercise of corruption in the employment process. Main dataset for this research is derived from the Asian Foundation’s national surveys that have been ongoing since 2004. Logistic regression is used to generate models and estimate the likelihood of an individual engaging in corruption. Based on the empirical findings of this thesis the variables of age, gender, number of children in a family, education, living standard, place of living and contribution of the female members of the family to the household income are found to be the main supply side drivers of corruption in the Afghanistan’s job market. Therefore, the analytical part of this research focuses on these main variables (in addition to control variables such as judiciary satisfaction of people from local authorities, affiliation to a certain province, or a specific ethnicity). At the end, this research provides certain measures upon which the Afghan government’s policies aimed for reduction of corruption in the employment process should be correspondingly aligned with.