In many developing and transition countries, we observe rather high levels of corruption. We argue that the missing political support for anti-corruption policies is due to a lack of economic and financial reforms. Our model is based on the fact that corrupt officials have to pay entry fees to get lucrative positions. In a probabilistic voting model, we show that this, together with the lack of economic opportunities, makes anti-corruption policies less likely. Compared to a reformed economy, more voters are part of the corrupt system and, more importantly, rents from corruption are distributed differently. Economic liberalization increases the support for anti-corruption measures. The additional effect of financial liberalization is ambiguous.JEL classifications: D73, H11, D72, 017.

This paper investigates the impact of emigration on the political choice regarding the size of the welfare state. Mobility has two countervailing e¤ects: the political participation e¤ect and the tax base e¤ect. With emigration, the composition of the constituency changes. This increases the political in ‡uence of the less mobile part of the population. The new political majority has to take into account that emigration reduces tax revenues and thereby a¤ects the feasible set of redistribution policies. The interaction of the two e¤ects has so far not been analyzed in isolation. We …nd that the direction of the total e¤ect of migration depends on the initial income distribution in the economy. Our results also contribute to the empirical debate on the validity of the median-voter approach for explaining the relation between income inequality and redistribution levels.JEL Classi…cation: F22, H50, D31, D72

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