Remittances and Bureaucratic Corruption

• In Event: Corruption

Abstract

Remittances are often presented as a boon for development in democratic labour-exporting countries by providing resources for investment and for recipients to pressure governments to increase public spending in health and education. Furthermore, macro-level studies have shown that remittances are correlated with higher expert-coded measures of control of corruption in democracies. In this paper, we present a darker side to remittances: they significantly increase recipients’ experiences of corruption at the individual level in Latin America and Africa. This effect is driven by remittance recipients’ greater contact with state institutions and officials, increased resources and higher propensity for purchasing investment goods. We provide evidence that remittances bring increased exposure to public officials in order to protect recipients' investments, and recipients must often pay bribes to do so.

Authors

• Barry Maydom, Birkbeck College, University of London

• Ana Isabel Lopez Garcia, Maastricht University