1. Survey Methodology in Brief

The 2008 Bribe Payers Survey consists of 2,742 interviews with senior business executives in 26 countries and territories completed between 5 August and 29 October 2008. The survey was carried out on behalf of TI by Gallup International, which was responsible for the overall implementation of the survey and the data quality control process. Gallup International relied on a network of partner institutions to carry out the survey locally.

The countries surveyed were selected on the basis of their Foreign Direct Investment (FDI) inflows and imports, and importance in regional trade. Total inflows of FDI and imports of goods from these 26 countries amounted to 54 percent of world flows in 2006. In each country there were a minimum of 100 senior business executives interviewed and samples in each country were designed taking into consideration the following variables: the size of firms, sector and location. Additionally, due to the nature of the phenomenon under analysis, the survey oversampled large and foreign-owned firms.

To assess the international supply side of bribery reflected in the 2008 Bribe Payers Index (BPI), senior business executives were asked about the likelihood of foreign firms from countries they have business dealings with to engage in bribery when doing business in the respondents’ country. In short, senior business executives provided their informed perceptions of the sources of foreign bribery, and these views formed the basis of the 2008 BPI.

The 2008 BPI ranks 22 countries. The countries chosen are some of the world’s largest and most influential economies, with combined global exports of goods and services and outflows of FDI that represented 75 percent of the world total in 2006. Australia, Brazil, India and South Africa were also included for their role as major regional trading powers. The 2008 BPI is calculated based on two questions from the Bribe Payers Survey. Senior business executives were first asked which of the 22 countries to be ranked they have commercial relationships with. For those countries that they selected, they were then asked to assess the frequency with which companies from these countries engage in bribery when operating in their own (the respondents’) countries. To construct the Index, the 5-point response scale used in the survey was reversed, converted into a 10-point scale system and then a simple average was calculated for each country. Assessments of a respondent’s own country (12 countries in total) were not included. The countries are then ranked based on the mean scores obtained for each country.

Table 1 (page 5) shows the 2008 BPI results along with additional statistical information that indicate the level of agreement among respondents about each country’s performance, and the precision of the results.9 Scores range from 0 to 10, indicating the likelihood of firms headquartered in these countries to bribe when operating abroad: the higher the score for a country, the lower the likelihood of companies from this country to engage in bribery when doing business abroad. According to the senior business executives interviewed around the world, companies from Belgium and Canada were least likely to engage in bribery when operating abroad. These two countries are followed closely by the Netherlands and Switzerland. At the other end of the spectrum, respondents ranked companies from Russia as those most likely to engage in bribery when doing business abroad. No country receives a 9 or 10 in the 2008 BPI. This means that all of the world’s most influential economies were viewed, to some degree, as exporting corruption.