The Impact of Mayors’ Corruption on Spanish Municipal SpendingEl impacto de la corrupción de los alcaldes en el gasto municipal español

  1. Bastida, Francisco 1
  2. Guillamón, María-Dolores 2
  3. Ríos, Ana-María 2
  1. 1 Prince Sultan University, Riyadh, SAUDI ARABIA
  2. 2 Universidad de Murcia
    info

    Universidad de Murcia

    Murcia, España

    ROR https://ror.org/03p3aeb86

Revista:
Revista de contabilidad = Spanish accounting review: [RC-SAR]

ISSN: 1138-4891

Año de publicación: 2022

Volumen: 25

Número: 1

Páginas: 107-120

Tipo: Artículo

DOI: 10.6018/RCSAR.412721 DIALNET GOOGLE SCHOLAR lock_openDIGITUM editor

Otras publicaciones en: Revista de contabilidad = Spanish accounting review: [RC-SAR]

Objetivos de desarrollo sostenible

Resumen

We investigate the impact of mayors’ corruption on the size and structure of Spanish municipal budgets. The theory posits that total expenditure is greater in corrupt governments: €77.08 higher per capita in our sample when a corrupt mayor is in office. Moreover, the literature predicts that mayors (agents), will spend more on items directly connected with corruption, rather than expenditure priorities demanded by the citizens (principals). Thus, we show that total expenditure, capital, trash collection and police are higher when corruption exists. Literature predicts that corrupt mayors spend less on items that provide fewer opportunities to collect bribes: our data show that corrupt mayors do not spend more on health. Corrupt mayors spend on average 1.46 years on duty after being taken to court with a formal indictment on a corruption charge. This indicates that in Spain, sadly, resigning the mayoralty is not automatic when facing criminal charges for corruption.

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Regarding policy implications within the secondary corruption posited by the political elasticity theory, we propose several measures to curb municipal corruption in Spain. First, the Government Accounting Office should focus on these municipal expenditures when auditing municipal financial statements: capital expenditures, police and trash collection. Second, new legislation should scrutinize “white elephant” capital projects by requiring authorization, independent cost-benefit analysis and monitoring from the central government if the investment exceeds certain percentage of the total municipal budget. Third, corrupt mayors’ higher total expenditure per capita is funded partly through grants received from regional or central governments. These governments should better monitor whether the money transferred to municipalities is properly spent.

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