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Education, Complaints, and Accountability

Author

Listed:
  • Juan Botero
  • Alejandro Ponce
  • Andrei Shleifer

Abstract

Better-educated countries have better governments, an empirical regularity that holds in both dictatorships and democracies. Possible reasons for this fact are that educated people are more likely to complain about misconduct by government officials and that more frequent complaints encourage better behavior from officials. Newly assembled individual-level survey data from the World Justice Project show that, within countries, better-educated people are more likely to report official misconduct. The results are confirmed using other survey data on reporting crime and corruption. Citizens? complaints might thus be an operative mechanism that explains the link between education and the quality of government.

Suggested Citation

  • Juan Botero & Alejandro Ponce & Andrei Shleifer, "undated". "Education, Complaints, and Accountability," Working Paper 69711, Harvard University OpenScholar.
    • Handle: RePEc:qsh:wpaper:69711
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    File URL: http://scholar.harvard.edu/shleifer/node/69711
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    2. Méon, Pierre-Guillaume & Sekkat, Khalid, 2022. "A time to throw stones, a time to reap: how long does it take for democratic transitions to improve institutional outcomes?," Journal of Institutional Economics, Cambridge University Press, vol. 18(3), pages 429-443, June.
    3. Albert Solé-Ollé & Elisabet Viladecans-Marsal, 2017. "Housing booms and busts and local fiscal policy," Working Papers XREAP2017-14, Xarxa de Referència en Economia Aplicada (XREAP), revised Dec 2017.
    4. Sun, Hongyan & Yuen, Desmond C.Y. & Zhang, Jiahang & Zhang, Xu, 2020. "Is knowledge powerful? Evidence from financial education and earnings quality," Research in International Business and Finance, Elsevier, vol. 52(C).
    5. Beatty, Timothy & Shimshack, Jay P., "undated". "Monitoring and Enforcement in a Food Safety Context," 2018 Annual Meeting, August 5-7, Washington, D.C. 273913, Agricultural and Applied Economics Association.
    6. Alessandro Belmonte, 2021. "Sophisticated electoral accountability," Annals of Public and Cooperative Economics, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 92(2), pages 233-260, June.
    7. Sajad Rahimian, 2021. "Corruption Determinants, Geography, and Model Uncertainty," Papers 2105.12878, arXiv.org.
    8. Charron, Nicholas & Rothstein, Bo, 2016. "Does education lead to higher generalized trust? The importance of quality of government," International Journal of Educational Development, Elsevier, vol. 50(C), pages 59-73.
    9. Michel André Maréchal & Alain Cohn & Jeffrey Yusof & Raymond Fisman, 2025. "Whose Preferences Matter for Redistribution? Cross-Country Evidence," Journal of Political Economy Microeconomics, University of Chicago Press, vol. 3(1), pages 1-24.
    10. Apergis, Nicholas, 2018. "Education and democracy: New evidence from 161 countries," Economic Modelling, Elsevier, vol. 71(C), pages 59-67.
    11. Maniloff, Peter & Kaffine, Daniel T., 2021. "Private monitoring and public enforcement: Evidence from complaints and regulation of oil and gas wells," Journal of Environmental Economics and Management, Elsevier, vol. 108(C).

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