Political corruption, public procurement, and budget composition: Theory and evidence from OECD countries

This paper examines the relation between political corruption and the composition of public spending. A rent-seeking model is used to describe political rent creation through the composition of public spending. Political corruption is indicated by empirical results for 29 OECD countries for the period 1996-2009: allocation of public spending to expenditure categories characterized by high-technology goods supplied by non-competitive industries varies positively with the Corruption Perceptions Index (CPI) provided by Transparency International. Previous literature on corruption in government has focused on low-income countries. The results of this study suggest that political corruption is also an issue in OECD countries.