Isolated state capitals such as Albany and Sacramento are associated with less accountability and worse governance

Albany, Sacramento, and Tallahassee – what do these state capitals have in common? They are all located some distance from the main population centres of their state. In new research, Filipe Campante finds that states with more isolated capitals such as these tend to be more corrupt, and spend less on public goods, and more on administrative expenditures instead. He argues that this corruption is fuelled by the fact that these cities’ tend to be covered far less in the media outside their locations, which in turn leads to substantially reduced public oversight.