Corruption, Social Trust and Transition: the Case of the Czech Republic

The purpose of this paper is to propose research into corruption and social trust and their effect on businesses in transition economies with special reference to the Czech Republic. The literature review discusses the concepts of corruption and social trust and provides an explanation of how these can be used, in the case of the Czech Republic, when investigating the influence of these two phenomena on businesses operating in this environment. The discussion is augmented by a preliminary analysis based on secondary data obtained from Transparency International, the World Values Survey, the World Bank and the Polity IV project. This suggests that the assumptions derived from the literature review are valid. The paper concludes by proposing a methodology for further research.