Second, corruption is a generalized problem in almost all emerging markets. As shown by
Furman and Stiglitz (1998) and Radelet and Sachs (1998b), the Asian crisis economies as a group
do not stand out on business surveys and other measures as being more corrupt than non-crisis
emerging markets. Yes, Indonesia scores at the bottom of almost all rankings, but Thailand scores
comparable to, and Korea higher than, many non-crisis merging markets such as Chile, Colombia,
India, China and Taiwan. Corruption simply is not the obvious characteristic that separates the
crisis countries from the non-crisis emerging markets. That is not to suggest that corruption
either helped these countries or was benign -- far from it. Rather, while cronyism certainly
created some of the vulnerabilities that set the stage for the crisis, it alone cannot account for the
timing, severity, or even location of the crisis.