Corruption and Public Expenditure in Italian Mezzogiorno

This paper is divided in two parts. The first, exposes a review ofthe empirical literature on the italian economy and particularly on the Italian Mezzogiorno dealing with the relationship between government expenditure in public works, corruption, and productivity in the private sector of the economy. These studies underline the fact that corruption often makes public expenditure for infrastructures ineffective: this is especial/y true when public expenditure is discretional/y managed by political actors. In the second part, startingfrom a criticaI analysis of actual Italian legislation concerning public contracts, we suggest anti-corruption strategies, in order to guarantee the effectiveness, efficiency and efficacy ofpublic works.