Admission is Free Only if Your Dad is Rich! Distributional Effects of Corruption in Schools in Developing Countries

Emran, M. Shahe ; Islam, Asadul ; Shilpi, Forhad

World Bank, Washington, DC

关键词: AGRICULTURAL SECTOR;    AGRICULTURAL SHOCKS;    AGRICULTURAL WAGE;    AGRICULTURAL WAGES;    AGRICULTURE;   

DOI  :  10.1596/1813-9450-6671
RP-ID  :  WPS6671

学科分类：社会科学、人文和艺术（综合）

来源: World Bank Open Knowledge Repository

【 摘 要 】

In the standard model of corruption, therich are more likely to pay bribes for their children'seducation, reflecting higher ability to pay. This predictionis, however, driven by the assumption that the probabilityof punishment for bribe-taking is invariant acrosshouseholds. In many developing countries lacking in rule oflaw, this assumption is untenable, because the enforcementof law is not impersonal or unbiased and the poor havelittle bargaining power. In a more realistic model where theprobability of punishment depends on the household'seconomic status, bribes are likely to be regressive, both atthe extensive and intensive margins. Using rainfallvariations as an instrument for household income in ruralBangladesh, this paper finds strong evidence that corruptionin schools is doubly regressive: (i) the poor are morelikely to pay bribes, and (ii) among the bribe payers, thepoor pay a higher share of their income. The resultsindicate that progressivity in bribes reported in theearlier literature may be due to identification challenges.The Ordinary Least Squares regressions show that bribesincrease with household income, but the InstrumentalVariables estimates suggest that the Ordinary Least Squaresresults are spurious, driven by selection on ability andpreference. The evidence reported in this paper implies that"free schooling" is free only for the rich andcorruption makes the playing field skewed against the poor.This may provide a partial explanation for the observededucational immobility in developing countries.