After the collapse of Communism in Central and Eastern Europe, former party members were particularly likely to start … resources, information and opportunities provided by former party membership or because people with specific individual … attributes were more likely to become party members (self-selection). This study is the first to separate the causal effect of …

We study the effect of former Communist party membership on paying bribes to public officials and motivations for …-socialist countries in 2015/16. To deal with endogeneity, we instrument party membership with information on whether family members were … affected by the Second World War. Instrumental variable results suggest that links to the former Communist party increase the …