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Cutting the Head off the Snake: An Empirical Investigation of Hierarchical Corruption in Burkina Faso

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  • Adam Salisbury

Abstract

This paper exploits a natural experiment to assess whether arresting the head of Burkina Faso’s Customs Ministry for corruption charges had any trickle-down effect on the petty corruption behaviour of lower-ranked customs officials. I measure petty corruption using a unique micro-dataset collated by the USAID West Africa Trade Hub, which records over 257,000 bribes paid by truck-drivers across six West African countries from 2006 to 2012. Using a difference-in-difference methodology, I find that the arrest significantly reduced the bribe-taking behaviour of Burkinabé customs officials relative to non-customs officials in Burkina Faso and to customs officials in three neighbouring countries. These results are robust to a variety of robustness tests and alternative explanations. Overall, my findings support the select use of leadership decapitation as an anti-corruption tool, though the dynamics of the results post-arrest point to the need for further research before its long-term effectiveness can be more confidently asserted.

Suggested Citation

  • Adam Salisbury, 2018. "Cutting the Head off the Snake: An Empirical Investigation of Hierarchical Corruption in Burkina Faso," CSAE Working Paper Series 2018-11, Centre for the Study of African Economies, University of Oxford.
    • Handle: RePEc:csa:wpaper:2018-11
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    References listed on IDEAS

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    1. Benjamin A. Olken & Rohini Pande, 2012. "Corruption in Developing Countries," Annual Review of Economics, Annual Reviews, vol. 4(1), pages 479-509, July.
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    6. Benjamin A. Olken & Patrick Barron, 2009. "The Simple Economics of Extortion: Evidence from Trucking in Aceh," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 117(3), pages 417-452, June.
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    Cited by:

    1. Foltz, Jeremy & Li, Kangli, 2023. "Competition and corruption: Highway corruption in West Africa," Journal of Development Economics, Elsevier, vol. 163(C).
    2. Foltz, Jeremy D. & Li, Kangli, 2020. "Bargain to Extort: Spatial Allocation of Checkpoints and Highway Corruption in West Africa," 2020 Annual Meeting, July 26-28, Kansas City, Missouri 304449, Agricultural and Applied Economics Association.

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    Keywords

    corruption; hierarchies; leadership decapitation;
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