Decentralization, political competition and corruption

Facundo Albornoz and Antonio Cabrales

Journal of Development Economics, 2013, vol. 105, issue C, 103-111

Abstract: We study the effect of decentralization on corruption in a political agency model from the perspective of a region. In a model where corruption opportunities are lower under centralization at each period of time, decentralization makes it easier for citizens to detect corrupt incumbents. As a consequence, the relationship between fiscal decentralization and corruption is conditional on political competition: decentralization is associated with lower (higher) levels of corruption for sufficiently high (low) levels of political competition. We test this prediction and find that it is empirically supported. Also, we show how the preferences of voters and politicians about fiscal decentralization can diverge in situations where political competition is weak.

Keywords: Decentralization; Centralization; Political agency; Corruption; Quality of politicians (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: D72 D73 H11 P16 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2013
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (35)

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0304387813001065
Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:eee:deveco:v:105:y:2013:i:c:p:103-111

DOI: 10.1016/j.jdeveco.2013.07.007

Access Statistics for this article

Journal of Development Economics is currently edited by M. R. Rosenzweig

More articles in Journal of Development Economics from Elsevier
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Catherine Liu ().