Can Parental Migration Reduce Petty Corruption in Education?

Abstract

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Does emigration reduce corruption?

“…Among the possible reasons, Tyburski mentions the power of remittances to reduce households' dependence on state programs and clientelism, which encourages voting for opposition parties and increases government accountability. Finally, in an empirical study that is most closely related to ours, Höckel et al (2015) show that parental migration leads to a reduction in informal payments to school teachers in Moldova, which the authors explain with the migration-induced change in corruption norms at the household level (value transfer effect). Table 1 summarizes channels through which migration may affect corruption at the household level.…”

“…As a result, remittance receivers will be more likely to bribe. This conjecture corroborates the prediction of the theoretical model of Höckel et al (2015), whereby people will make informal payments to teachers to improve their 4 In a somewhat different vein, Mariani (2007) argues that the prospect of emigration makes skilled people choose careers related to productive activities (such as entrepreneurship) rather than rent-seeking, corruption-prone activities (such as bureaucracy); this is because productive activities are valued abroad more than rent-seeking is. Such change in the allocation of skilled workers, induced by emigration prospects, would reduce corruption in the home country.…”

“…While our conclusions are in congruence with Höckel et al (2015), we expand the exploration of the corruption-migration link at the household 1 See, for example, Bologna and Ross (2015), Johnson et al (2011) and (Méon and Sekkat 2005) for the detrimental effects of corruption on entrepreneurship and economic growth. That said, evidence exists that corruption might be 'greasing the wheels' of an economy (e.g., Bologna and Ross 2015;Dreher and Gassebner 2013).…”

“…Following Böhme et al (2015) and Höckel et al (2015), we use the interaction between historical municipality-level migration networks and the economic conditions at the main migrant destination countries (municipality-level variable) as an instrument for emigration at the household level. Specifically, for each municipality, we take the summation of the GDP growth rates of major migrant destinations weighted by the pre-existing migrant networks (the number of migrants relative to municipality population) in those destinations.…”

“…2 While a few studies have provided evidence at the country or region level (Abdih et al 2012;Beine and Sekkat 2013;Berdiev et al 2013;Tyburski 2012), to the best of our knowledge only one study has provided household-level evidence on this question: Höckel et al (2015) find that migrant households are less likely to make informal payments to teachers in Moldova. While our conclusions are in congruence with Höckel et al (2015), we expand the exploration of the corruption-migration link at the household 1 See, for example, Bologna and Ross (2015), Johnson et al (2011) and (Méon and Sekkat 2005) for the detrimental effects of corruption on entrepreneurship and economic growth.…”