TY  - JOUR
AU  - Glaeser,Edward L.
AU  - Saks,Raven
TI  - Corruption in America
JF  - National Bureau of Economic Research Working Paper Series
VL  - No. 10821
PY  - 2004
Y2  - October 2004
UR  - http://www.nber.org/papers/w10821
L1  - http://www.nber.org/papers/w10821.pdf
N1  - Author contact info:
Edward L. Glaeser
Department of Economics
315A Littauer Center
Harvard University
Cambridge, MA 02138
Tel: 617/495-0575
Fax: 617/495-7730
E-Mail: eglaeser@harvard.edu
AB  - 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.
ER  -