Understanding the resource curse: A large-scale experiment on corruption in Tanzania

Abstract

Corruption appears to be an important driver of the resource curse in developing countries. We report from a large-scale field experiment in Tanzania that provides causal evidence on how expectations about future natural resource revenues shape expectations about corruption and the willingness to engage in corrupt behavior. We find robust evidence that information about the discovery of natural gas in Tanzania causes people to expect more corruption in the future but has no impact on people's willingness to engage in corrupt behavior. We believe that our results shed some light on underlying mechanisms of the resource curse.