Corruption in America

Edward L. Glaeser and Raven Saks

No 2043, Harvard Institute of Economic Research Working Papers from Harvard - Institute of Economic Research

Abstract: We use a data set of federal corruption convictions in the U. S. to investigate the causes and consequences of corruption. More educated states, and to a less degree richer states, have less corruption. This relationship holds even when we use historical factors like education in 1928 or Congregationalism in 1890, as instruments for the level of schooling today. The level of corruption is weakly correlated with the level of income inequality and racial fractionalization, and uncorrelated with the size of government. There is a weak negative relationship between corruption and employment and income growth. These results echo the cross-country findings, and support the view that the correlation between development and good political outcomes occurs because more education improves political institutions.

Date: 2004
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (11)

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.economics.harvard.edu/pub/hier/2004/HIER2043.pdf (application/pdf)
Our link check indicates that this URL is bad, the error code is: 404 Not Found (http://www.economics.harvard.edu/pub/hier/2004/HIER2043.pdf [301 Moved Permanently]--> https://www.economics.harvard.edu/pub/hier/2004/HIER2043.pdf)

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:fth:harver:2043

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in Harvard Institute of Economic Research Working Papers from Harvard - Institute of Economic Research Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Thomas Krichel ().