The Political Economy of Corruption and the Role of Financial Institutions.” Discussion Paper No. 135. Governance and the Efficiency of Economic Systems (GESY

In many developing and transition countries, we observe rather high levels of corruption. This is surprising from a political economy perspective, as the majority of people in a corrupt country suffer from high corruption levels. Our model is based on the fact that corrupt officials have to pay entry fees to get lucrative positions. In a probabilistic voting model, we show that a lack of financial institutions can lead to more corruption as more voters are part of the corrupt system and, more importantly, as the rents from corruption are distributed differently. Thus, the economic system has an effect on political outcomes. Well-functionin