Opportunity and motivation of corruption in the framework of institutional economics: An analysis on EU countries

The concept of corruption that can be defined as the use of public power for individual interest has been perceived as an important economic and social problem. The first vital step for evaluating issue of corruption is to analysis to the aspects of corruptional environment and properties to determine to factors causing corruption.?What are the factors leading corruption?? is the fundamental question of studies related to corruption. The studies on causes of corruption underline generaly social structure economic, political, judiciary and cultural sides of social structure. Therefore, corruption should be considered as a social deviation instead of defining it as an individualistic action. The assumption explaining that human behaviour is cause by the sophisticated relations among social, political, economic and cultural structures support this argument. Because of this assumption, it can be said that corruptional behaviour of individuals depend on some circumstances do not only include economic factors but also cover politcal, juiciary, social and cultural elements .According to this view, it is tried to obtain the answer to the question of what are the economic, political, judiciary, social and cultural factors that may cause corruption. For answering to the question an empirical study is pursued by using a cross-section data on 25 members of EU. Maximum likelihood method is preferred in estimating coefficients of regression model.According t oto the estimated results, not only economic factors such as economic development, economic freedom, inflation and distribution of income but also political, judiciary, social and cultural factors such as democracy, judiciary system, education and Protestant tradition have the effects on corruption.This study has shown that corruption a multifaceted and complicated concept. It is not proper to define this concept by the help of only economic factors. To determine opportunities and motivations behind of corruption in a beter way, it is very necessary to analysis political, judiciary, social and cultural factors in additioan to economic factors