IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/now/jlqjps/100.00008013.html

Predictable Corruption and Firm Investment: Evidence from a Natural Experiment and Survey of Cambodian Entrepreneurs

Author

Listed:
  • Malesky, Edmund J.
  • Samphantharak, Krislert

Abstract

This paper utilizes a unique dataset of 500 firms in ten Cambodian provinces and a natural experiment to test a long-held convention in political economy that the predictability of a corruption is at least as important for firm investment decisions as the amount of bribes a firm must pay, provided the bribes are not prohibitively expensive. Our results suggest that this hypothesis is correct. Firms exposed to a shock to their bribe schedules by a change in governor invest significantly less in subsequent periods, as they wait for new information about their new chief executive. Furthermore, the amount of corruption (both measured by survey data and proxied by the number of commercial sex workers) is significantly lower in provinces with new governors. Our findings are robust to a battery of firm-level controls and province-level investment climate measures.

Suggested Citation

  • Malesky, Edmund J. & Samphantharak, Krislert, 2008. "Predictable Corruption and Firm Investment: Evidence from a Natural Experiment and Survey of Cambodian Entrepreneurs," Quarterly Journal of Political Science, now publishers, vol. 3(3), pages 227-267, October.
    • Handle: RePEc:now:jlqjps:100.00008013
    DOI: 10.1561/100.00008013
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://dx.doi.org/10.1561/100.00008013
    Download Restriction: no
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1561/100.00008013?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    More about this item

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:now:jlqjps:100.00008013. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Lucy Wiseman (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.nowpublishers.com/ .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.