Does Corruption Hinder Investment? Evidence from Russian Regions
Journal: Econstor (Econstor)
Year: 2017

This paper investigates the causal relationship between corruption and fixed capital investment in Russian regions. The panel data on corruption allow to control for unobserved heterogeneity with fixed effects estimation. We address the problem of endogeneity by introducing novel instrumental variables for corruption: the presence of free press and violations of journalists' rights. Our main result is the strong negative effect of corruption on aggregate investment in fixed capital. Disaggregati