Illegal drugs and public corruption: Crack based evidence from California

Alessandro Flamini (), Babak Jahanshahi and Kamiar Mohaddes

European Journal of Political Economy, 2021, vol. 69, issue C

Abstract: Do illegal drugs foster public corruption? To estimate the causal effect of drugs on public corruption, we adopt the synthetic control method and exploit the fact that crack cocaine markets emerged in California in 1981, before reaching any other U.S. state. Our results show that public corruption more than tripled in California in the first three years following the arrival of crack cocaine. We argue that this resulted from the particular characteristics of illegal drugs: cheap technology and rigid demand, which fosters a convergence of interests between criminals and corrupted public officials resulting in a positive causal impact of illegal drugs on corruption.

Keywords: Public corruption; Crack cocaine; Synthetic control; Illegal drugs; Law enforcement; Difference in difference; Organized crime (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: C12 D73 K42 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2021
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (1)

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0176268021000069
Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only

Related works:
Working Paper: Illegal Drugs and Public Corruption: Crack Based Evidence from California (2018)
Working Paper: Illegal drugs and public corruption: Crack based evidence from California (2018)
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:poleco:v:69:y:2021:i:c:s0176268021000069

DOI: 10.1016/j.ejpoleco.2021.102005

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
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Catherine Liu ().