Windfall of Resources (Brollo, Nannicini, Perotii, Tabellini)

Paper by Fernanda Brollo, Tommaso Nannicini, Roberto Perotii and Guido Tabellini studies the effect of additional government revenues on political corruption and on the quality of politicians, both with theory and data. They conclude that “higher exogenous revenues induce more corruption, because incumbents have more rooms to grab rents without disappointing voters”. And also that “if the benefit of corrupt activities is more valuable to those with worse outside options, individuals of lower quality are attracted into politics” . About Brasil, they say that “Brazilian municipalities are a fragile institutional environment where political agency problems are widespread”. Complete paper: http://www.nber.org/papers/w15705