It is hypothesized that prosecution agencies that are dependent on the executive
have less incentives to prosecute crimes committed by government
members which, in turn, increases their incentives to commit such crimes.
Here, this hypothesis is put to an empirical test focusing on a particular
kind of crime, namely corruption. In order to test it, it was necessary to
create an indicator measuring de jure as well as de facto independence of
the prosecution agencies. The regressions show that de facto independence
of prosecution agencies robustly reduces corruption of officials