In recent years, many of the Commonwealth countries have experienced a reduction in income inequalities due to the development of financial markets and intermediaries. at the same time, widespread corruption among public officials, civil servants, or politicians from these countries have been well documented. a key public policy question is whether the return to financial sector development at the level of massive corruption, exacerbate income inequality, offsetting the benefits of financial development. Using a panel data of 30 Commonwealth countries over the period of 1995-2008, it is found that the high rates of corruption in the Commonwealth countries are crowding out the return to financial development. The return to financial development on income inequality, at the level of higher corruption, are positive for all countries and significantly larger for the low-and middle-income countries compared to high-income countries, which suggest that the complementary nature of policies that simultaneously reduce corruption and promote financial development have a greater impact in reducing income inequality than implementing these policies separately.

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This paper is the first attempt to identify crime-delinquency relationship at the national level. We apply various techniques to identify the dynamic relationship between crime and delinquency rates in USA from 1987 to 2008. Two types of crime rates are observed, violent and property crime rate. The study finds strong short-term evidence that delinquency causes an increase in property crime rate for the years 1987 through 1995 and again 1996 through 2000, but no evidence for a long-term relationship in the full sample 1987 through 2008. The reverse effect of crime on delinquency rate is mostly insignificant. The property values work as a linkage between crime-delinquency relationship in the short-term data. One important finding of this study is the apparent exogeneity of the crime rate with respect to delinquency rate during the economic downturn. We also control for 30-year fixed-rate mortgages, housing starts, and median weekly wage.

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