教育对腐败的影响:来自越南大学扩张的证据

Education and corruption are negatively correlated at the cross-national level, but little is known about the causal relationship between the two. We combine newly-collected data on timing and locations of Vietnam’s national expansion of universities with detailed survey data on experiences of corruption from over 170,000 respondents in 320 districts across 12 years. Using staggered difference-in-differences, we show that cohorts exposed to the university expansion are 87% more likely to have a university education. However, this increase neither translates into fewer individuals being affected by corruption nor increases the propensity to denounce corrupt officials. Instead, we find that education increases the incidence of bribe requests and perceptions of corruption. The mechanism most consistent with our data is that higher education raises household income, and that the associated rise in the opportunity cost of time and in exposure to bribe-prone situations increases exposure to corruption.