Why Are Some Public Officials More Corrupt Than Others?
THE WILLIAM DAVIDSON INSTITUTE AT THE UNIVERSITY OF MICHIGAN Why Are Some Public Officials More Corrupt Than Others? By: Jennifer Hunt William Davidson Institute Working Paper Number 790 September 2005 Why Are Some Public Officials More Corrupt Than Others? Jennifer Hunt* McGill University and NBER Abstract Using detailed Peruvian data measuring bribery, I assess which types of public official are most corrupt and why. I distinguish between the bribery rate and the size of bribes received, and seek to explain the variation in each across public institutions. The characteristics of officials’ clients explain most of the variation for bribery rates, but none for bribe amounts. A measure of the speed of honest service at the institution explains much of the remaining variation for both bribery rates and amounts. The results indicate that the bribery rate is higher at institutions with bribe-prone clients, and that bribery rates and bribe amounts are higher where clients are frustrated at slow service. Faster and better service would reduce corruption. Overall, the judiciary and the police are by far the most corrupt institutions. Keywords: Corruption, bribery, institutions, governance. JEL codes : H4, K4, O1 * Department of Economics, Leacock Building, Room 443, 855 Sherbrooke Street West, Montreal, Quebec, H3A 2T7 Canada This paper has been prepared for the Handbook of Economic Corruption , edited by Susan Rose-Ackerman and forthcoming in the Edward Elgar Press. I thank Vincent Chandler for excellent research assistance, and the Social Science and Humanities Research Council of Canada for financial support. I am grateful to Susan Rose-Ackerman, Sonia Laszlo and participants in the McGill summer seminar series for comments, to Miguel Jaramillo Baanante for enlightening conversations about Peru and to the Instituto Nacional de Estadística e Información for providing the data.
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