Electoral Accountability and Corruption inLocal Governments: Evidence from Audit Reports

Political corruption is a concern of many modern democracies. It weakens democraticinstitutions, restricts public services, and lowers productivity undermining economicdevelopment. Yet despite its importance, our understanding of what determines corruption islimited. This paper uses a novel dataset of political corruption in local governments,constructed from reports of an anti-corruption program in Brazil, to test whether the possibilityof re-election affects the level of rents extracted by incumbent politicians...