Flamini, A., Jahanshahi, B., Mohaddes, K.

Illegal Drugs and Public Corruption: Crack Based Evidence from California

CWPE1847

Abstract: Do illegal drugs foster public corruption? To estimate the causal effect of drugs on public corruption in California, we adopt the synthetic control method and exploit the fact that crack cocaine markets emerged asynchronously across the United States. We focus on California because crack arrived here in 1981, before reaching any other state. Our results show that public corruption more than tripled in California in the first three years following the arrival of crack cocaine. We argue that this resulted from the particular characteristics of illegal drugs: a large trade-off between profits and law enforcement, due to a cheap technology and rigid demand. Such a trade-off fosters a convergence of interests between criminals and corrupted public officials resulting in a positive causal impact of illegal drugs on corruption.

Keywords: Public corruption, crack cocaine, synthetic control, illegal drugs, and law enforcement

JEL Codes: C12 D73 K42

Author links: Kamiar Mohaddes  

PDF: https://www.econ.cam.ac.uk/research-files/repec/cam/pdf/cwpe1847.pdf

Open Access Link: https://doi.org/10.17863/CAM.33798

Published Version of Paper: Illegal Drugs and Public Corruption: Crack Based Evidence from California, Flamini, A., Jahanshahi, B. and Mohaddes, K., European Journal of Political Economy (2021)

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