Hold Your Nose and Vote

This paper analyses why corruption can persist for long periods in a democracy and inquires whether this can result from a well-informed rational choice of the citizens. By applying a citizen-candidate model of representative democracy, the paper analyzes how corruption distortsthe allocation of resources between public and private expenditure, altering the policy preferences of elected and nonelected citizens in opposite directions. The result is a reduction in real public expenditure and, if the median voter's demand for public goods is sufficiently elastic, a tax reduction. In this case, so