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We examine the possibility that higher educational attainment makes people more corrupt. We first use a simple Becker's crime-and-punishment type of model to show that, under a set of fairly reasonable assumptions, there can be an inverted-U relationship between an individual's education and attitude against corruption. Empirically, we use data from the European Values Study and the educational reforms in 13 European countries to estimate the relationship between years of schooling and individuals' scores about ``accepting bribes is never justifiable.'' In our 2SLS regressions, we find an insignificant linear relationship but a significant inverted-U relationship between education and the attitude against corruption. These results are robust to a number of specifications.
