TY - JOUR AU - Persson,Torsten AU - Tabellini,Guido AU - Trebbi,Francesco TI - Electoral Rules and Corruption JF - National Bureau of Economic Research Working Paper Series VL - No. 8154 PY - 2001 Y2 - March 2001 UR - http://www.nber.org/papers/w8154 L1 - http://www.nber.org/papers/w8154.pdf N1 - Author contact info: Torsten Persson Torsten and Ragnar Soderberg Chair in Economic Sci Institute for International Economic Studies Stockholm University SE-106 91 Stockholm SWEDEN Tel: +46 8 163066 Fax: +46 8 6747801 E-Mail: Torsten.Persson@iies.su.se Guido Tabellini IGIER Universita' Bocconi Via Roentgen 1 20136 Milano Italy Tel: 39 2 583 6 3305; fax 3302 E-Mail: guido.tabellini@unibocconi.it Francesco Trebbi University of British Columbia 1873 East Mall Vancouver, BC, V6T1Z1 Canada Tel: 604.218.5900 Fax: 604.822.5915 E-Mail: ftrebbi@mail.ubc.ca AB - Is corruption systematically related to electoral rules? A number of studies have tried to uncover economic and social determinants of corruption but, as far as we know, nobody has yet empirically investigated how electoral systems ináuence corruption. We try to address this lacuna in the literature, by relating corruption to dierent features of the electoral system in a sample from the late nineties encompassing more than 80 (developed and developing) democracies. Our empirical results are based on traditional regression methods, as well as non-parametric estimators. The evidence is consistent with the theoretical models reviewed in the paper. Holding constant a variety of economic and social variables, we find that larger voting districts - and thus lower barriers to entry - are associated with less corruption, whereas larger shares of candidates elected from party lists - and thus less individual accountability - are associated with more corruption. Altogether, proportional elections are associated with more corruption, since voting over party lists is the dominant effect, while the district magnitude effect is less robust. ER -