Firms and Corruption

Corruption is not a new topic, but it has increasingly become a central policy issue around the world. Many countries, international organizations, business networks and firms have pursued anticorruption campaigns. Nonetheless, corruption persists. Although the (empirical) literature on corruption and (economic) performance at the country level has been relatively well developed, a firm-level perspective remains a relatively underexplored area of research. The papers in this issue break new ground both by advancing our theoretical understanding of firm-level corruption and by introducing new and promissory research methods and empirical achievements. In this introduction, we provide the points of departure for the special issue and present the contributions and added value before introducing the individual papers. We end by offering conclusions for our new field of research.