Journal of Political Economy Vol. 133 No. 8 2025
Combating Political Corruption with Policy Bundles
Abstract
In this paper, we develop a dynamic model of politicians who can engage in corruption. The model provides important insights into the determinants of corruption and how to design policies to combat it. We estimate the model using data from Brazil to measure voters’ willingness to pay for various commonly proposed anticorruption policies, such as increasing audit probabilities, raising politicians’ wages, and extending term limits. We document that while audit policies effectively reduce corruption, a multipronged approach that bundles an audit policy with other policies can achieve much higher welfare gains.
- DOI
- 10.1086/735508
- Volume
- 133
- Issue
- 8
- Pages
- 2414-2461
- Language
- en
- Sources
- bibtex:phds-export.bib openalex crossref