What is it about?
It is hypothesized that prosecution agencies that are dependent on the ex-ecutive have less incentives to prosecute crimes committed by government members that in turn increases their incentives to commit such crimes. Here, this hypothesis is put to an empirical test focusing on a particular kind of crime, namely corruption. In order to test it, it was necessary to create an indicator measuring de jure as well as de facto independence of the prosecution agencies. The regressions show that de facto independ-ence of prosecution agencies robustly reduces corruption of officials.
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Why is it important?
It is the first ever indicator informing about both the degree of de jure independence that prosecutors enjoy in 78 countries as well as the de facto degree that they actually enjoy.
Perspectives
The two indicators open the door for empirically based cross-country research regarding competences as well as consequences of the office of prosecutor
Professor Stefan Voigt
University of Hamburg
Read the Original
This page is a summary of: Do Independent Prosecutors Deter Political Corruption? An Empirical Evaluation across Seventy-eight Countries, American Law and Economics Review, March 2010, Oxford University Press (OUP),
DOI: 10.1093/aler/ahq002.
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