A Replication of “Weathering Corruption†( Journal of Law and Economics, 2008)

Adriana Cordis and Jeffrey Milyo

Public Finance Review, 2021, vol. 49, issue 4, 589-626

Abstract: Previous research using data on convictions for corruption-related crimes from the Public Integrity Section (PIN) of the Department of Justice points to a positive correlation between the amount of corruption in a state and the amount of federal funds provided to the state for natural disaster relief. We take a closer look at the relationship between public corruption and disaster assistance and find little support for the hypothesis that the provision of federal disaster aid increases public corruption. Our analysis suggests instead that prior evidence of such a link arises from an unexplained correlation during the 1990s between disaster aid and convictions of postal employees for crimes such as stealing mail. Convictions for postal service crimes appear to account for a large fraction of the total federal convictions reported by PIN, which could have far-reaching implications, given that the PIN data have been used so extensively in the corruption literature.

Keywords: corruption; public integrity; disaster aid; FEMA; Hurricane Katrina (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2021
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/10911421211028835 (text/html)

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:sae:pubfin:v:49:y:2021:i:4:p:589-626

DOI: 10.1177/10911421211028835

Access Statistics for this article

More articles in Public Finance Review
Bibliographic data for series maintained by SAGE Publications ().