Weewe

Javier Ferreira
High Int-02-Hansen
10/04/12
W2D1
The Venezuelan Economy and Corruption.
The economy is considered as the adequate and efficient use of available resources in a country. From timeto time people had given a bad use of their resources without letting the economy to develop. The most common obstacles for the economic development are for example, population growth, naturalresources, education, technology, religion, external debt, capital flight, and corruption. Now day’s corruption is one of the most common obstacles for economic development in South America, especially inVenezuela under the government of Hugo Chávez since 1998.
Corruption, is defined as abuse of public power for personal profit, is a worldwide occurrence that affects almost every facet of social andeconomic life (Podobnik, Shao, Njvaro, Plamen, Ivanon & Stanley, 2008). Corruption is always related to government, and it increases when governmental entities start to use the nation’s money astheir own. Shleifer, and Vishny (1993) define government corruption as “the sale by government officials of government property for personal gain (P.3). Corruption appears and affects the economy whenthe nation’s money is being used for personal purposes by the government, instead of being used to import products, build public schools, public hospitals, and creating national companies to providemore jobs and opportunities for the people which As a result the economy stagnates, and don’t let the country to grow. Venezuela is a great example of corruption, Coronel (2006) says that “During thegovernment of President Hugo Chávez, however, corruption has exploded to unprecedented levels. Billions of dollars are being stolen or are otherwise unaccounted for, squandering Venezuelan resourcesand enriching high-level officials and their cronies” (P.1). For that reason, the 2012 Economic Freedom of the World ranked Venezuela 144th out of a group of 144 nations; the bottom of the ladder...