TY  - JOUR
AU  - Ferraz,Claudio
AU  - Finan,Frederico
TI  - Electoral Accountability and Corruption: Evidence from the Audits of Local Governments
JF  - National Bureau of Economic Research Working Paper Series
VL  - No. 14937
PY  - 2009
Y2  - April 2009
UR  - http://www.nber.org/papers/w14937
L1  - http://www.nber.org/papers/w14937.pdf
N1  - Author contact info:
Claudio Ferraz
Department of Economics
PUC-Rio
Rio de Janeiro, RJ, 22453-900
Brazil  
E-Mail: cferraz@econ.puc-rio.br

Frederico Finan
Department of Economics
University of California
508-1 Evans Hall #3880
Berkeley, CA 94720-3880
Tel: 310/794-5958
Fax: 310/825-9528
E-Mail: ffinan@econ.berkeley.edu
AB  - Political institutions can affect corruption. We use audit reports from an anti-corruption program in Brazil to construct new measures of political corruption in local governments and test whether electoral accountability affects the corruption practices of incumbent politicians. We find significantly less corruption in municipalities where mayors can get reelected. Mayors with re-election incentives misappropriate 27 percent fewer resources than mayors without re-election incentives. These effects are more pronounced among municipalities with less access to information and where the likelihood of judicial punishment is lower. Overall our findings suggest that electoral rules that enhance political accountability play a crucial role in constraining politician's corrupt behavior.
ER  -