Corruption and climate change policies: do the bad old days matter?

We study the effect of countries’ historical legacy with corruption on recent climate change policies and on global cooperation. Current policy outcomes build on policy choices made in previous years, and these choices were likely affected by the degree of corruption at the time. Our empirical findings using data for up to 131 countries suggest that accumulated historical experience with corruption is important for today’s policy outcomes, and appears to be more important than the current level of corruption.