Frauke Steglich Gave a Presentation at the Annual Meeting of the European Public Choice Society

KCG Researcher Frauke Steglich participated in the Annual Meeting of the European Public Choice Society (EPCS), which took place on April 1-4, 2019 at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, Israel. EPCS focuses on economic and interdisciplinary research of non-market decision making processes and institutions.

During the four-day conference, three keynote addresses were held: Prof. Francisco José Veiga, Ph.D. (EPCS President) gave an overview of his research on political budget cycles at the local government level; Prof. Oded Galor, Ph.D. (Herbert H. Goldberger Professor of Economics at the Brown University) presented his paper “Diversity and Conflict”; and Prof. Mathias Thoenig, Ph.D. (Faculty of Business and Economics at the University of Lausanne) presented his research on “The Refugee’s Dilemma: A Structural Model of Outmigration from Nazi Germany”. Overall, about 230 papers on political economy related topics were presented at the conference.

Frauke presented the paper “FDI and Petty Corruption in Sub-Saharan Africa – An Empirical Analysis at the Local Level”, which is joint work with Dr. Julian Donaubauer (HSU) and Peter Kannen (HSU). Using geo-referenced firm and household survey data this project analyzes whether the presence of foreign investors is associated with changes in individuals’ corruption experience around foreign-owned production facilities in Sub-Saharan African countries. Applying an estimation strategy that uses spatial and temporal variation in the data, they find that the presence of foreign firms increases bribery among people living nearby. When examining two potential channels, they find no support that FDI-induced economic activity leads to more corruption. In contrast, the results provide evidence that FDI affects corruption mainly via norm transmission. Frauke received valuable feedback from the discussant and session participants.