Independent Prosecutors

Do Independent Prosecutors Deter Political Corruption? An Empirical Evaluation across Seventy-eight Countries

Anne van Aaken, Lars P. Feld and Stefan Voigt

It is hypothesized that prosecution agencies that are dependent on the executive have less incentives to prosecute crimes committed by government members that in turn increases their incentives to commit such crimes. Here, this hypothesis is put to an empirical test focusing on a particular kind of crime, namely corruption. In order to test it, it was necessary to create an indicator measuring de jure as well as de facto independence of the prosecution agencies. The regressions show that de facto independence of prosecution agencies robustly reduces corruption of officials.