Social and Behavioral Sciences Commons^™

Curse Or Cure? Remittances And Corruption In The Developing World, Michael D. Tyburski

Theses and Dissertations

This dissertation examines the relationship between migrant remittances, money earned by migrant workers and sent back home, and corruption. Remittances total more $400 billion US a year, making them an important capital flow with understudied political consequences. Some scholarship argues that remittances increase corruption by allowing governments to reduce their provision of public goods and redistribute wealth to political supporters as private goods. In contrast, I argue that the relationship between remittances and corruption varies by regime type. Remittances will likely aggravate corruption in relatively authoritarian regimes where governments require smaller supporting coalitions and may be more likely to view …