Do Freedom of Information Laws Decrease Corruption?

Samia Tavares

MPRA Paper from University Library of Munich, Germany

Abstract: It has been argued that greater transparency is needed to reduce corruption. One way of increasing transparency is through the adoption of Freedom of Information (FOI) laws. This paper uses the introduction of FOI laws as a natural experiment to determine their effect on corruption. Using a sample of democratic countries and two different corruption indices, I find that countries that adopted FOI laws saw an increase in corruption. Results are robust throughout different specifications. Moreover, I find that countries with plurality systems potentially experienced a decrease in corruption following the adoption of FOI legislation. Having a parliamentary system, however, had no impact on the effect of the reform.

Keywords: Corruption; freedom of information; transparency; accountability (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: D72 D73 H11 K39 K42 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2007-05-02
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-pol and nep-reg
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:pra:mprapa:3560

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