Effect of political corruption on municipal tax revenues

espanolLa mayor parte de la investigacion sobre la corrupcion se ha realizado a nivel nacional, porque su estudio a nivel regional o local es mas complejo. Aunque hay muchos estudios sobre la relacion entre la corrupcion y el gasto publico, muy pocos examinan la influencia de la corrupcion en los ingresos publicos, y no hemos encontrado ninguno a nivel subnacional, excepto el reciente de Liu y Mikesell (2019). Nuestro objetivo es analizar la corrupcion politica a nivel municipal, estudiando si el nivel de ingresos de los gobiernos municipales se ve afectado por los casos de corrupcion que involucran a los politicos locales. Otros factores que se toman en cuenta son la ideologia politica, el gobierno de mayoria absoluta y el ciclo electoral. La muestra es un panel de datos de todos los municipios espanoles con una poblacion de mas de 50.000 habitantes para el periodo 2002-2013. EnglishMost research on corruption has been at the national level, because its study at the regional or local level is more complex. Although there are many studies about the relation between corruption and government spending, very few examine the influence of corruption on government revenues, and we have not found any at the subnational level, except the recent Liu & Mikesell (2019). Our aim is to analyze political corruption at the municipal level, studying whether the level of revenue of municipal governments is affected by the cases of corruption involving local politicians. Some of the other factors taken into account are political ideology, absolute majority government and the electoral cycle. The sample is a data panel of all the Spanish municipalities with a population of over 50,000 inhabitants for the period 2002-2013. Our results reveal that municipalities with higher levels of corruption have higher tax revenues in per capita terms.