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Freille, Sebastian (2007) Essays On Corruption And Economic Development. PhD thesis, University of Nottingham.

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Abstract

This thesis addresses two central questions in the field of corruption: the relationship between corruption and some of its main determinants and the effect that these relationships have on economic development. The research presented in this thesis extends the literature on corruption in several directions.

The third chapter studies the empirical relationship between press freedom and bureaucratic corruption. As one of the main democratic checks and balances, press freedom is thought to impose a curb on corruption. We investigate two related aspects. The first considers whether there exists a robust empirical relationship between press freedom and corruption. The second investigates the detail, by exploring which types of restrictions to press freedom are robustly related to corruption. Using robust regression techniques on a panel of countries we conclude that restrictions to media freedom are robustly associated to higher corruption. Also we find that both political and economic restrictions to press freedom are strongly related to corruption while legal and administrative restrictions are not.

The fourth chapter studies the relationship between decentralisation, corruption and development in a dynamic macroeconomic model. We assess whether corruption is always harmful to development, whether decentralisation is always beneficial for development and the effect that corruption produces on the relationship between decentralisation and development. Our main finding from this model is that if corruption is absent, decentralisation is the best alternative for development

but may not be preferable to centralisation if corruption is widespread in the economy.

The fifth chapter examines the empirical relationship between decentralisation and corruption. This chapter has two main goals. First, to reconsider the available evidence in light of some newly assembled data. The second goal is to incorporate into the analysis several dimensions of decentralisation simultaneously. We find that the inconsistencies in the empirical literature arise due to the frequent omission of multiple measures of decentralisation. Secondly, that both fiscal decentralisation and constitutional centralisation are simultaneously associated with lower corruption. Finally, we find that certain forms of political decentralisation -local elections- weaken the positive effect of constitutional centralisation -unitarism- on corruption.

Item Type:	Thesis (University of Nottingham only) (PhD)
Supervisors:	Kneller, Richard Haque, M Emranul
Keywords:	Corruption,Development,Decentralisation,Bureaucratic,Press Freedom,Macroeconomics,Robustness,Heterogeneity,Decentralization,Political Institutions,Determinants of Corruption
Subjects:	J Political science > JF Political institutions (General)
Faculties/Schools:	UK Campuses > Faculty of Social Sciences, Law and Education > School of Economics
Item ID:	10302
Depositing User:	EP, Services
Date Deposited:	23 Oct 2007
Last Modified:	16 Oct 2017 07:03
URI:	https://eprints.nottingham.ac.uk/id/eprint/10302

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