Corruption and crisis: a comparative analysis of the Greek health sector.

Abstract

Economic crises and resultant austerity measures impact on the financing and administration of health systems with potential consequences for corruption in that sector. This dissertation examines the hypothesis that the economic crisis that has afflicted Greece since 2009 has affected corruption in the health sector. After reviewing the relevant literature, the dissertation focuses on Greece’s performance regarding health sector corruption using Transparency International’s Global Corruption Barometer (GCB). First, the country’s scores for health sector corruption are compared to those of other South-Eastern European and EU member-states. Second, data from 22 countries are used to examine whether changes in health sector corruption are related to changes in economic indicators and health system financing. Inconsistent with the hypothesis that corruption increases in times of economic crisis, there is no relationship between health sector GCB scores and changes in GDP. The share of health financing that come from out-of-pocket payments if the factor that is most strongly (positively) associated with health sector corruption.