Essays on Anti-Corruption Enforcement and Corporate Influence

Abstract

This dissertation examines the consequences of government-led anti-corruption programs in international and domestic politics. The anti-corruption efforts implemented by sovereign states in the past two decades are unprecedented in scale. They have implications for interstate cooperation and the behavior of non-state actors, especially multinational corporations, that have only recently begun to emerge. The present study contributes to the advancement of their understanding by investigating three such programs: the United States Foreign Corrupt Practices Act, the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) Anti-Bribery Convention, and the Brazilian government’s municipal audit program. In each paper in this dissertation, I ask a specific question about each of the anti-corruption measures that places the interaction between governments and firms squarely in the foreground. My findings show that, while these government programs aim to constrain corporate misbehavior, they nevertheless further entangle the fortunes and futures of state and non-state actors.

The first paper, "Assessing Bias in U.S. Enforcement of the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act,'' studies the prosecution of anti-corruption through the lens of the resource-constrained regulator. Using formal methods and novel empirical strategies, I find a surprising result: U.S. anti-corruption action disproportionately sanctions U.S. firms, not foreign-headquartered ones.

Such a finding has implications for interstate cooperation in enforcing global anti-bribery laws. In "Peer Monitoring and Information Flows: The Case of the OECD Anti-Bribery Convention,'' I extend my analysis to international relations. My quantitative analysis shows that peer monitoring positively affects enforcement, but that the informational role of firms has been underappreciated in the literature.

The last paper, "Corporate Interests and Campaign Donations in Brazilian Municipalities'' (joint with Galileu Kim), dives into a subnational setting. We use insights from financial portfolio theory to explore the effects of random government audits on corporate involvement with local elections. We find that random crackdowns actually induce more corporate involvement with mayoral races.

Together, these papers shed light on the effects of government anti-corruption policies. I am hopeful that their insights will continue to be of relevance in the years to come.