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Measuring Public Corruption in the United States: Evidence from Administrative Records of Federal Prosecutions

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Abstract

A growing empirical literature examines the causes and consequences of public corruption in the United States; however, most of these studies measure corruption using data on federal convictions that is of dubious quality and provenance. We document these concerns and describe an alternative data source that provides more reliable and detailed information on corruption prosecutions and convictions by type of state official and even by lead charge. We employ these data to construct a taxonomy of public corruption that dispels some popular and academic misconceptions. Our findings call into question the lessons from previous empirical research; earlier studies of the causes and consequences of corruption in the states should be re-examined with more appropriate measures of corruption convictions.

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  • Jeffrey Milyo & Adriana Cordis, 2013. "Measuring Public Corruption in the United States: Evidence from Administrative Records of Federal Prosecutions," Working Papers 1322, Department of Economics, University of Missouri.
    • Handle: RePEc:umc:wpaper:1322
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    References listed on IDEAS

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    1. James E. Alt & David Dreyer Lassen, 2003. "The Political Economy of Institutions and Corruption in American States," Journal of Theoretical Politics, , vol. 15(3), pages 341-365, July.
    2. Filipe R. Campante & Quoc-Anh Do, 2014. "Isolated Capital Cities, Accountability, and Corruption: Evidence from US States," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 104(8), pages 2456-2481, August.
    3. Jeffrey Milyo & Adriana Cordis, 2013. "Do State Campaign Finance Reforms Reduce Public Corruption?," Working Papers 1301, Department of Economics, University of Missouri.
    4. Kevin M. Murphy & Andrei Shleifer & Robert W. Vishny, 2008. "Why Is Rent-Seeking So Costly to Growth?," Springer Books, in: Roger D. Congleton & Kai A. Konrad & Arye L. Hillman (ed.), 40 Years of Research on Rent Seeking 2, pages 213-218, Springer.
    5. Peter T. Leeson & Russell S. Sobel, 2008. "Weathering Corruption," Journal of Law and Economics, University of Chicago Press, vol. 51(4), pages 667-681, November.
    6. Kaufmann, Daniel & Kraay, Aart & Mastruzzi, Massimo, 2010. "The worldwide governance indicators : methodology and analytical issues," Policy Research Working Paper Series 5430, The World Bank.
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    Cited by:

    1. Adriana S. Cordis, 2014. "Corruption and the Composition of Public Spending in the United States," Public Finance Review, , vol. 42(6), pages 745-773, November.
    2. Jamie Bologna & Amanda Ross, 2015. "Corruption and Entrepreneurship: Evidence from a Random Audit Program," Working Papers 15-05, Department of Economics, West Virginia University.
    3. Grooms, Katherine K., 2015. "Enforcing the Clean Water Act: The effect of state-level corruption on compliance," Journal of Environmental Economics and Management, Elsevier, vol. 73(C), pages 50-78.
    4. Andrew Mell & Simon Radford & Seth Alexander Thevoz, 2015. "Is There a Market for Peerages? Can Donations Buy You a British Peerage? A Study in the Link Between Party Political Funding and Peerage Nominations, 2005-14," Economics Series Working Papers 744, University of Oxford, Department of Economics.

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    More about this item

    Keywords

    corruption; disaster assistance; FEMA;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • H5 - Public Economics - - National Government Expenditures and Related Policies
    • D7 - Microeconomics - - Analysis of Collective Decision-Making

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