Abstract for: Understanding & Modelling Corruption: Exploiting System Dynamics

Over the past few decades, many studies of corruption have been carried out. This study builds a system dynamics model of corruption, which helps in the understanding of corruption and acts as an input into future policy-making on corruption. System dynamics modeling allows researchers to discover ‘hidden’ dynamics. Moreover, system dynamics provides the analyst an increased level of flexibility, as these models use both the theoretical underpinnings and empirical data. Some of our key findings, such as the effect of inflation, government size, transparency in international negotiations and the juxtaposition of religious values with corruption, have not been widely discussed in the literature. In this study, we can offer an explanation that uncovers the underlying factors that address the dynamics of corruption, social, economic, political, judicial and cultural factors in the case of any developing country, which can be applied with some modifications for the developed world as well.