does Bribery help or hurt

Bribery in the business world is a very polemical term, where it involves the corruption between the private sector and the government. The article “Does bribery help or hurt firm growth around the world?” by Jessie Qi Zhou & Mike W. Peng provides a good review and examination of how bribery plays a role in the growing process of a firm and what implications or consequences it can bring. The article brings two important points of view; the first one is focus on what levels the firms have to use bribery in order to obtain benefits (which depends in what country the firm is located), the second point is in what degree bribery will benefit or injured the development of the company. These points are very accurate in the sense the article delivers a good idea about what is happening between firms and government and illustrates how the political and government structure in each country can be easily seduced by system of bribery. First, the author explains that government institutions can be considered as one of the factors that influence firms to apply bribery as a political strategy and as one of the sources that provide a perfect environment for bribery, where officials might abuse the government power to get some “private benefits and solicit illegal payments from firms”. A good example is the case of Wal-Mart when the retail store in the attempt to expand in Mexico. The company used bribery to facilitate the establishment in Mexico. Then the scandal hits the world’s biggest retailers. The company lost over $10 billion of market value overnight and just for the bribery of Mexican officials for the amount of $24 million. This is where the article provides three dimensions or factors in regards of the inefficiency government agencies. The first is the Financial Market Development that “in many emerging economics, financial markets such as commercial banking systems and securities markets are not well established”. These systems somehow limit the independent