 Local connectivity and corruption: Micro evidence from ChinaQijun Liu European Journal of Political Economy, 2025, vol. 86, issue C Abstract: A sizable literature has shown that personal connections play an important role in corruption. Among such corruption activities, the most pervasive is corruption by native government workers through local networks. Yet, little is known about the effect of local connectivity on corruption. This paper studies how local connectivity affects corruption. The analysis is based on individual-level corruption practices from China (N = 57,270). Corruption is measured by rents extracted from a population. The results show that local connectivity reduces corruption: government officials serving at hometown are less corrupt in extracting fewer rents from the local population than government officials from outside the region. The effect was amplified by local network intensity but offset by ethnic diversity in a region. The findings reveal nuances for policy arrangements for control of corruption contingent on whether government officials are from the local population or from outside. Keywords: Local connectivity; Rent seeking; Corruption; China (search for similar items in EconPapers) Downloads: (external link) Related works: Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:eee:poleco:v:86:y:2025:i:c:s0176268025000126 DOI: 10.1016/j.ejpoleco.2025.102652 Access Statistics for this article European Journal of Political Economy is currently edited by J. De Haan, A. L. Hillman and H. W. Ursprung More articles in European Journal of Political Economy from Elsevier |
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