Corruption and Firms

Emanuele Colonnelli and Mounu Prem

The Review of Economic Studies, 2022, vol. 89, issue 2, 695-732

Abstract: We estimate the causal real economic effects of a randomized anti-corruption crackdown on local governments in Brazil using rich micro-data on corruption and firms. After anti-corruption audits, municipalities experience an increase in the number of firms concentrated in sectors most dependent on government relationships and public procurement. Through the estimation of geographic spillovers and additional tests, we show that audits operate via both a direct detection effect as well as through indirect deterrence channels. Politically connected firms suffer after the audits. Our estimates indicate the anti-corruption program generates significant local multipliers which are consistent with the presence of a large corruption tax on government-dependent firms.

Keywords: Corruption; Firms; Brazil; Audits; Public procurement; Political connections; Misallocation; Development; D72; D73; G38; H57; H38; K00; L22; O10; O43 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2022
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (22)

Downloads: (external link)
http://hdl.handle.net/10.1093/restud/rdab040 (application/pdf)
Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.

Related works:
Working Paper: Corruption and Firms (2020)
Working Paper: Corruption and Firms (2020)
Working Paper: Corruption and firms (2019)
Working Paper: Corruption and Firms (2019)
Working Paper: Corruption and Firms (2019)
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:oup:restud:v:89:y:2022:i:2:p:695-732.

Access Statistics for this article

The Review of Economic Studies is currently edited by Thomas Chaney, Xavier d’Haultfoeuille, Andrea Galeotti, Bård Harstad, Nir Jaimovich, Katrine Loken, Elias Papaioannou, Vincent Sterk and Noam Yuchtman

More articles in The Review of Economic Studies from Review of Economic Studies Ltd
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Oxford University Press ().