The Effects of Education on Corruption: Evidence from Vietnam's University Expansion

Edmund J. Malesky, Martin Mattsson, Khoa Vu and Liaoliang Zhang

No 21302, CEPR Discussion Papers from Centre for Economic Policy Research

Abstract: Education and corruption are negatively correlated at the cross-national level, but little is known about the causal relationship between the two. We combine newly-collected data on timing and locations of Vietnam’s national expansion of universities with detailed survey data on experiences of corruption from over 170,000 respondents in 320 districts across 12 years. Using staggered difference-in-differences, we show that cohorts exposed to the university expansion are 78% more likely to have a university education. However, this increase neither translates into fewer individuals being affected by corruption nor increases the propensity to denounce corrupt officials. Instead, we find that education increases exposure to corruption at the individual level. The mechanism for this increase that is most consistent with our data is that education raises household income and higher income leads to more bribe payments.

Keywords: Corruption; Education (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: D73 H75 I23 I25 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2026-03
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