Corruption can be a tremendous drag on an economy and drive up the cost of services. Costs of corruption are felt directly by captive operations, but also indirectly when working with third party outsourcing firms. For example, if a firm needs to pay a bribe to speed approval of a business license, the cost will need to be absorbed by the business and will show up indirectly in the prices charged to clients.

Canada and the United States are clear leaders with the best corruption perceptions indexes. The rest of the top ten is a mix of European, Middle Eastern and European locations.  The large outsourcing locations have corruption challenges with China, India and the Philippines all in the bottom half.

Transparency International publishes a comprehensive index of corruption perceptions across 180 countries.  The index includes 13 different sources and scores countries from 10 to zero with higher scores being better. The study includes the frequency and size of bribes in both the private and public sector.