Regulation and Corruption: Evidence from the United States*
利用1990-2013年美国面板数据，采用随机前沿方法和Lewbel识别策略，发现监管与腐败之间不存在因果关系，但忽略内生性或测量误差会得出虚假相关。
Abstract I exploit a panel data set on United States for the time span 1990–2013 to evaluate the causal impact of government regulation on bureaucratic corruption. Despite the stylized fact that corruption and regulation are positively correlated, there is a lack of empirical evidence to substantiate a causal relationship. Using novel data on federal regulation of industries (Al‐Ubaydli and McLaughlin [2015], Regulation and Governance , 11 , 109–123), and convictions of public officials from the Public Integrity Section, I apply a stochastic frontier approach to account for one‐sided measurement error in bureaucratic corruption and the Lewbel [2012, Journal of Business and Economic Statistics , 30 , 67–80] identification strategy to control for potential endogeneity of regulation. Results are striking. Based on the preferred model, there is evidence of endogeneity of regulation and absence of a causal link between regulation and corruption. However, if any of the above two econometric issues are ignored, evidence of a spurious relationship between corruption and regulation is found.