Fighting Corruption in Education: What Works and Who Benefits?

Oana Borcan (), Mikael Lindahl and Andreea Mitrut
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Oana Borcan: Department of Economics, School of Business, Economics and Law, Göteborg University, Postal: P.O. Box 640, SE 40530 Gothenburg, Sweden, http://www.economics.gu.se

No 612, Working Papers in Economics from University of Gothenburg, Department of Economics

Abstract: We investigate the efficiency and distributional consequences of a corruptionfighting initiative in Romania targeting the endemic fraud in a high-stakes high school exit exam, which introduced CCTV monitoring of the exam and credible punishment threats. We find that punishment coupled with monitoring was effective in reducing corruption. Estimating the heterogeneous impact for students of different ability, poverty status, and gender, we show that fighting corruption led to efficiency gains (ability predicts exam outcomes better) but also to a worrisome score gap increase between poor and non-poor students. Consequently,the poor students have reduced chances to enter an elite university.

Keywords: corruption; high-stakes exam; bribes; monitoring and punishment (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: I21 I24 K42 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 56 pages
Date: 2015-02
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-edu and nep-law
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Citations: View citations in EconPapers (2)

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https://gupea.ub.gu.se/handle/2077/38272 (text/html)

Related works:
Journal Article: Fighting Corruption in Education: What Works and Who Benefits? (2017)
Working Paper: Fighting Corruption in Education: What Works and Who Benefits? (2015)
Working Paper: Fighting Corruption in Education: What Works and Who Benefits? (2015)
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