Bardhan, who occupies ground somewhere between rent-seeking theory and radical approaches to corruption, has a more sophisticated explanation. The key structural reasons for the exponential growth of corruption in recent years are the shooting up, as a consequence of higher economic growth, of the market value of scarce public resources such as land, oil and gas fields, mineral resources, and the telecommunication spectrum and the enhanced opportunities for making money from their favoured allocation by a public authority; more expensive elections; major policy changes involving large-scale
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