IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/oup/jafrec/v20y2011i3p395-418.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Income Shocks and Corruption in Africa: Does a Virtuous Cycle Exist?

Author

Listed:
  • Maarten J. Voors
  • Èrwin H. Bulte
  • Richard Damania

Abstract

Empirical evidence suggests that governance quality is a key driver of economic growth and that, in turn, higher incomes might have a positive causal effect on the quality of governance. Such complementarity could invite virtuous cycles of development. Using a measure of corruption as our proxy for the quality of governance, and rainfall as an instrument for income, we explore this issue and find evidence to the contrary. For a panel of African countries, positive income shocks on average tend to invite extra corruption. Closer inspection, however, reveals that this result can be attributed to the most corrupt countries. Conversely, countries with a sufficiently low level of corruption can escape the detrimental effect of income booms on corruption and may actually experience a virtuous cycle of development. Copyright 2011 , Oxford University Press.

Suggested Citation

  • Maarten J. Voors & Èrwin H. Bulte & Richard Damania, 2011. "Income Shocks and Corruption in Africa: Does a Virtuous Cycle Exist?," Journal of African Economies, Centre for the Study of African Economies, vol. 20(3), pages 395-418, June.
    • Handle: RePEc:oup:jafrec:v:20:y:2011:i:3:p:395-418
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1093/jae/ejr011
    Download Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to search for a different version of it.

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Patrick Carter & Jonathan R. W. Temple, 2017. "Virtuous Circles and the Case for Aid," IMF Economic Review, Palgrave Macmillan;International Monetary Fund, vol. 65(2), pages 397-425, June.
    2. Zohid Askarov & Hristos Doucouliagos, 2013. "Does aid improve democracy and governance? A meta-regression analysis," Public Choice, Springer, vol. 157(3), pages 601-628, December.
    3. Joël CARIOLLE, 2014. "Corruption in Turbulent Times: a Response to Shocks?," Working Papers P106, FERDI.
    4. Joël CARIOLLE, 2016. "The voracity and scarcity effects of export booms and busts on bribery," Working Papers P146, FERDI.
    5. Amy Margolies & John Hoddinott, 2012. "Mapping the Impacts of Food Aid: Current Knowledge and Future Directions," WIDER Working Paper Series wp-2012-034, World Institute for Development Economic Research (UNU-WIDER).
    6. Baniyelme D. Zoogah & Phyllis Swanzy-Krah, 2024. "Ethnic Obligation and Deviant Behavior: A Dynamic Moral Economy Perspective," Journal of Business Ethics, Springer, vol. 195(2), pages 375-405, November.
    7. Faris Alshubiri & Syed Ahsan Jamil & Samia Fekir, 2024. "Corruption Control, Government Effectiveness and Banking Stability: Does Corruption Grease or Sand the Wheels?," Journal of the Knowledge Economy, Springer;Portland International Center for Management of Engineering and Technology (PICMET), vol. 15(1), pages 2656-2681, March.
    8. Joël CARIOLLE, 2014. "Corruption in Turbulent Times: a Response to Shocks?," Working Papers P106, FERDI.
    9. Hoddinott, John & Margolies, Amy, 2012. "Mapping the Impacts of Food Aid: Current Knowledge and Future Directions," WIDER Working Paper Series 034, World Institute for Development Economic Research (UNU-WIDER).
    10. repec:unu:wpaper:wp2012-34 is not listed on IDEAS
    11. Kearney, Colm, 2012. "Emerging markets research: Trends, issues and future directions," Emerging Markets Review, Elsevier, vol. 13(2), pages 159-183.
    12. Beekman, Gonne & Bulte, Erwin H. & Nillesen, Eleonora E.M., 2013. "Corruption and economic activity: Micro level evidence from rural Liberia," European Journal of Political Economy, Elsevier, vol. 30(C), pages 70-79.
    13. Khalid Sekkat, 2022. "Have you been served, your honor? Yes, thank you, your excellency: the judiciary and political corruption," Constitutional Political Economy, Springer, vol. 33(3), pages 326-353, September.

    More about this item

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:oup:jafrec:v:20:y:2011:i:3:p:395-418. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Oxford University Press (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/csaoxuk.html .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.