The word corruption comes of Latin corruptus that it means broken in pieces. The Aurlio dictionary (1999), presents the corruption meaning as ' ' the act or effect to corrupt, decomposition, putrefao, lewdness depravation, perversion, bribe, peita' ' in sending the idea of something, obviously, negative that, therefore, does not generate positive consequences. We can describe, in an ample conception, that corruption is the interaction enters at least two people or groups of people through but that in the world in development it produces effect destrutivos’ ‘ effect. Our objective is the clarification of the facts and factors of the corruption, by means of some theoretical research and studies, having as base the theories developed for Douglas North and Edith Penrose, adding some authors who had developed articles and teses with the focus in corruption, beyond statistical data to relate its economic consequences for a country. The index of bigger reference in relation to the level of corruption in the countries is of International Transparency, created in 1993, in Berlin. One is about a not-governmental organization with the objective to congregate available surveys in an only pointer creating, thus, a form of mensurar the corruption in diverse countries, through an annual report of the countries of the world and its indices of corruption.
2 CORRUPTION AS DOUGLAS NORTH Douglas Cecil North are an economist, professor of Washington University, winner of the prize Nobel de Economia in 1993, that it developed a set of research guided in the attempt to explain because some countries if develop while others possess a level of unsatisfactory development. In its analyses, the thinker evidenced that the great difference between these countries is in the laws, the regulations, contracts and the culture. The author affirms that the society is formed by institutions, defined for it as ' ' the rules of jogo' ' that they delimit action.