關於以薪養廉有效性的探討: 基於中國的經驗

The cause of corruption and the strategy for combating corruption are important topics of interest to academics and practitioners. Many people view low salaries of civil servants as a contributing factor to corruption. Many countries including China, inspired by the experiences of corruption control of Singapore and Hong Kong, are promoting good civil service remuneration to ensure government integrity. Extremely low civil service remuneration makes it difficult for public workers to keep their heads above water. Low civil service pay may also discourage civil servants＇ effort to maintain personal integrity and result in so - called need - based corruption. However,if civil service pay is substantially increased to a level above the average salary in society,would it help reduce corruption？ This is an important theoretical and practical question. Drawing on longitudinal data from China, this article suggests that the relationship between civil service remuneration and corruption control is complex and there are misunderstandings concerning their correlation. The findings indicate that the civil service pay and corruption level have increased in parallel over the past 15 years. Some policy implications are drawn from this study.