The Political Economy of Institutions and Corruption in American States

James E. Alt and David Lassen

No 02-16, EPRU Working Paper Series from Economic Policy Research Unit (EPRU), University of Copenhagen. Department of Economics

Abstract: Theoretically, this paper draws on political agency theory to formulate hypotheses. Empirically, it shows that political institutions have a role in explaining the prevalence of political corruption in American states. In the states, a set of democracies where the rule of law is relatively well established and the confounding effects of differing electoral systems and regimes are absent, institutional variables relating to the openness of the political system inhibit corruption. That is, other things equal, the extent to which aspiring politicians can enter and gain financial backing, and to which voters can focus their votes on policies and thereby hold incumbent politicians accountable for policy outcomes and find substitutes for them if dissatisfied with those outcomes, reduce corruption as a general problem of agency. These institutional effects are estimated in the presence of controls for variables representing other approaches.

Date: 2002-11
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-pol
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (22)

Downloads: (external link)
http://web.econ.ku.dk/epru/files/wp/wp-02-16.pdf (application/pdf)
Our link check indicates that this URL is bad, the error code is: 404 Not Found (http://web.econ.ku.dk/epru/files/wp/wp-02-16.pdf [301 Moved permanently]--> https://web.econ.ku.dk/epru/files/wp/wp-02-16.pdf)

Related works:
Journal Article: The Political Economy of Institutions and Corruption in American States (2003)
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:kud:epruwp:02-16

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in EPRU Working Paper Series from Economic Policy Research Unit (EPRU), University of Copenhagen. Department of Economics �ster Farimagsgade 5, Building 26, DK-1353 Copenhagen K., Denmark. Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Thomas Hoffmann ().