The Long-term Effects of Anti-corruption Campaigns: New Evidence from Football

We examine whether campaign-based anti-corruption approaches effectively curb corruption in the long term. Our empirical setting exploits a unique anti-corruption campaign in the Chinese football community from 2009 to 2012. With match-fixing measured as abnormal points won in key matches, we find that although an anti-corruption campaign reduces match-fixing during its active phase, its long-term effect fades quickly, and the level of match-fixing significantly rebounds after the campaign ends. Our results indicate that without any institutional changes, combating corruption by launching intermittent campaigns has limited long-term effects.