Fighting Corruption in Education: What Works and Who Benefits?

62 Pages Posted: 26 Dec 2015

See all articles by Oana Borcan

Oana Borcan

University of Gothenburg

Mikael Lindahl

University of Bonn; IZA Institute of Labor Economics

Andreea Mitrut

University of Gothenburg

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 non-poor students. Consequently, the poor students have reduced chances to enter an elite university.

Keywords: corruption, high-stakes exam, bribes, monitoring and punishment

JEL Classification: I21, I24, K42

Suggested Citation

Borcan, Oana and Lindahl, Mikael and Mitrut, Andreea, Fighting Corruption in Education: What Works and Who Benefits?. IZA Discussion Paper No. 9561, Available at SSRN: https://ssrn.com/abstract=2708374 or http://dx.doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.2708374

Oana Borcan (Contact Author)

University of Gothenburg ( email )

Viktoriagatan 30
Göteborg, 405 30
Sweden

Mikael Lindahl

University of Bonn ( email )

Postfach 2220
Bonn, D-53012
Germany

IZA Institute of Labor Economics

P.O. Box 7240
Bonn, D-53072
Germany

Andreea Mitrut

University of Gothenburg ( email )

Viktoriagatan 30
Göteborg, 405 30
Sweden

HOME PAGE: http://www.hgu.gu.se/item.aspx?id=3081

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