E-Government as an anti-corruption strategy

This paper estimates the impact of e-government on the “control of corruption” indicator using a panel of 149 countries with two time observations (t=1996,2006). The first differenced estimator yields a positive and economically interesting effect. By the most conservative estimate, moving from the 10th percentile to the 90th percentile in the e-government distribution implies a reduction in corruption equivalent to moving from the 10th percentile to the 23rd percentile in the control of corruption distribution. Invoking external instruments, IV results are (statistically) similar.