Jens Chr. Andvig
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Summary
Jens Chr. Andvig’s main fields are comparative economics and political economy. Further sub-areas focused on in a comparative perspective have been interactions between the public sector and the market economy - such as corruption, public procurement and transition from socialist to market economy - and between family organization and the formal sector, more specifically corruption, transition from family based to formal economies, child labor and child soldiering.
Expertise
Education
1986 Dr. philos, University of Oslo, Department of Economics
1975 Master's degree in economics, University of Oslo, Department of Economics.
Work Experience
1999 Research for the World Bank, developing new strategies for the bank in the field of child labour in Africa.
1980- Research Fellow/Senior Research Fellow/Research Professor at NUPI
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Child soldiers: Reasons for variation in their rate of recruitment and standards of welfare
Why do some children voluntarily join while other children are forced to join military organization in situations of conflict, and why do the organizations recruit them? How is the actual number of children determined? These are the questions raised in this paper. To address them the author draws on results and ideas from three independent lines of research; One dealing with child labour in general, another with the study of conflicts and the third with children’s decision-making powers based on child psychology.
Geographical spread of corruption : Policies, institutions and cross-country economic interaction. Part I: Issues, theory
The international aspects of corruption have received considerable attention in both research and policy: What determines whether a country is highly corrupt or not? Most research has sought to answer this question by considering each country as reflecting the same kind of mechanism explaining both the high and low outcomes. In this paper some of the theoretical explanations suggested in the literature are reviewed at the same time as it suggests how the question needs to be rephrased if each country’s corruption rate is influenced by an internationally open economic system.
Corruption in China and Russia compared : Different legacies of central planning
During the first decade after markets became the major mechanisms of economic coordination in China and the area of the former Soviet Union (FSUA), corruption was perceived to increase in both. At the same time China experienced rapid growth while most countries in FSUA experienced steep declines. In the paper I argue that this difference is difficult to explain within an n-country, cross-section econometric framework. Instead a case-oriented approach with more institutional specification is chosen. In particular, the role of the former normative and institutional framework of central planning is explored. The paper describes some of the explanations of corruption as it occurred under central planning, including its limitations and how they may be linked to (negative or positive) growth mechanisms. In addition the posttransition data on corruption and growth are linked to major political characteristics at the point of transition.
'A house of straw, sticks or bricks'? Some notes on corruption empirics
Corruption has become a fashionable subject the last decade or so. The decades before it was neglected, and the phenomenon itself has been around as long as large-scale organisations. One reason for large shifts in emphasis is the lack of precise knowledge about corruption, particularly at elite level. That admits different views. When both social scientists’ and politicians’ perceptions are interrelated large shifts may be expected. By comparing the major corruption indexes such as Transparency International’s Corruption Perception Indexes to an earlier attempt to expand precise knowledge for policymaking, I argue that they are unable to supply the knowledge needed. The difficulty in gaining information about elite corruption is illustrated by means of simple game theory.
The Challenge of Poor Governance and Corruption
The paper is the author’s so-called ‘Opponent paper « to Susan Rose- Ackerman’s proposals for good governance and anti-corruption poli-cies at the Copenhagen Consensus 2004 meeting 24–28 May. There the most promising anti-corruption policies had to compete with other best poli-cies at other fields such as fight against AIDS, malaria, hunger prevention, and so on. He argues that while corruption and governance problems are important and may prevent any other kind of policy to succeed, no really effective anti-corruption policy has so far been proposed, and if it was, we wouldn’t know that it did. Hence, it would be unreasonable to make a strong claim for anti-corruption projects against their competitors.