The internet as an indicator of corruption awareness

Rajeev Goel, Michael Nelson () and Michael A. Naretta

European Journal of Political Economy, 2012, vol. 28, issue 1, 64-75

Abstract: We apply a standard specification of the causes of corruption to a large sample of countries to investigate the effect of internet awareness about corruption on prevalence and perceptions of corruption. The main hypothesis is that greater corruption awareness acts as a corruption deterrent. A unique data set of internet searches on Google and Yahoo is compiled using alternate variations of “corruption”, “bribery” and “country name” keywords to capture internet corruption awareness. Results show that internet hits about corruption per capita correlate negatively with corruption perceptions and corruption incidence. This finding generally holds for different specifications and other robustness checks.

Keywords: Corruption perceptions; Corruption awareness; Internet; Press (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: H8 K4 O5 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2012
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Citations: View citations in EconPapers (57)

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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:eee:poleco:v:28:y:2012:i:1:p:64-75

DOI: 10.1016/j.ejpoleco.2011.08.003

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