How long does it take for government decentralization to affect corruption?

Are countries with more decentralized fiscal and spending powers charac- 1 2 terized by a lower level of corruption? Do changes in the degree of decentralization 3 of such powers affect the level of corruption? If so, with which delay? This paper 4 innovates on the previous literature, which relies mainly on cross sections of coun5 tries, by analyzing a pool of 24 countries for the time interval 1995–2007. The answer 6 to both questions is positive and the estimated average delay is 3 years. The results 7 appear robust to changes of the estimation techniques, of the indicators of corruption, 8 of decentralization and of a variety of controlling factors