Influence of Digital Governance along the Conditional Distribution of Corruption

Advances in Information and Communication Technologies have opened opportunities to transform the relationship between government and citizens, contributing to the goals of better institutional quality and governance, which is crucial to curb corruption. The objective of this article is to analyse potential different effects of digital governance and along different points of the conditional distribution of corruption in large panel data covering 122 countries over the period 2004-2018, using quantile regressions. The findings suggest that the development of digital governance is important to reduce corruption despite its level. But the magnitude of its effects is lower in highly corrupt countries, where e-government is in an early stage, and so, this may result from the potential need to e-government attain a certain threshold to have higher effects. These countries need to develop strategies to enhance digital governance to benefit more from this channel to reduce corruption.