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  3. American Economic Journal: Economic Policy
  4. February 2017
  5. Fighting Corruption in Education: What Works and Who Benefits?

Fighting Corruption in Education: What Works and Who Benefits?

  • Oana Borcan
  • Mikael Lindahl
  • Andreea Mitrut
American Economic Journal: Economic Policy
vol. 9, no. 1, February 2017
(pp. 180-209)
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Abstract

We investigate the distributional consequences of a corruption-fighting initiative in Romania targeting the endemic fraud in a high-stakes high school exit exam, which introduced CCTV monitoring of the exam and credible punishment threats for teachers and students. We find that the campaign was effective in reducing corruption and, in particular, that monitoring increased the effectiveness of the punishment threats. Estimating the heterogeneous impact for students of different poverty status we show that curbing corruption led to a worrisome score gap increase between poor and nonpoor students. Consequently, the poor students have reduced chances to enter an elite university.

Citation

Borcan, Oana, Mikael Lindahl, and Andreea Mitrut. 2017. "Fighting Corruption in Education: What Works and Who Benefits?" American Economic Journal: Economic Policy, 9 (1): 180-209. DOI: 10.1257/pol.20150074

Additional Materials

JEL Classification

  • I21 Analysis of Education
  • I24 Education and Inequality
  • I28 Education: Government Policy
  • I32 Measurement and Analysis of Poverty
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