nonfarm employment and poverty in rural el salvador abstract this paper analyzes two complementary data sets to study poverty and the nonfarm sector in rural el salvador we find that rural poverty in el salvador remains acute and significantly higher than in urban areas while the rural poor are mainly agricultural laborers and marginal farmers some nonfarm activities are also of importance to the poor in fact nonfarm activities in el salvador account for a significant share of rural employment and income for both the poor and the nonpoor the poor on the one hand are engaged in last resort nonfarm activities that are not associated with high levels of labor productivity the nonpoor on the other are engaged in productive nonfarm activities which are likely to present a potent force for upward mobility significant correlates of these high productivity occupations include education infrastructure location and gender while most of the analysis is at the household level the data also permit some focus on small scale rural enterprise activities it appears that in el salvador very few rural enterprises report utilizing formal credit in setting up their activities in addition a significant proportion of enterprises are engaged in subcontracting arrangements with some larger often urban based firm

the role of wages and auditing during a crackdown on corruption in the city of buenos aires abstract we study the prices paid for basic inputs during a crackdown on corruption in the public hospitals of the city of buenos aires argentina during 1996 97 we find a well defined negative effect on the measures used to capture corruption prices paid by hospitals for basic homogeneous inputs decrease by 15 percent during the first 9 months of the crackdown after this period prices increase but they are still 10 percent lower than those prevailing before the crackdown relative to the precrackdown period higher wages play no role in inducing lower input prices when audit intensity can be expected to be maximal during the first phase of the crackdown but have a negative and well defined effect when audit intensity takes intermediate levels the last phase of the crackdown controlling for fixed effects we find that the wage elasticity of input prices exceeds 20 these results are consistent with the standard model of bribes of gary becker and george stigler

intersectoral transfer growth and inequality in rural ecuador abstract in this paper we study intersectoral transfer and its impact on the distribution of income in ecuador we find that income shares between farm and nonfarm activities are roughly equal on average although the rich in rural areas typically receive a greater share of income from nonfarm sources thus decomposing inequality by income source reveals that a rise in nonfarm incomes increases inequality drawing on a new method to estimate local level distributional outcomes growth of the high productivity nonfarm sector is observed to have a strong and positive association with average consumption and inequality growth of the low productivity nonfarm sector is associated with little change in either average income or income inequality irrespective of subsector growth of the nonfarm sector is associated with a substantial fall in poverty

corruption in america abstract we use a data set of federal corruption convictions in the u s to investigate the causes and consequences of corruption more educated states and to a smaller degree richer states have less corruption this relationship holds even when we use historical factors like congregationalism in 1890 as an instrument for the level of schooling today the level of corruption is also correlated with the level of income inequality and racial fractionalization and uncorrelated with the size of government there is a weak negative relationship between corruption and economic development in a state these results echo the cross country findings and support the view that the correlation between development and good political outcomes occurs because education improves political institutions

corruption and firm behavior evidence from african ports this paper investigates how corruption affects firm behavior using an original and unusually rich dataset on bribe payments at ports matched to firm level data we observe how firms adapt to different types of corruption by adjusting their transport strategies our results suggest that firms respond to the price effects of corruption organizing production in a way that increases or decreases demand for the public service

evaluation of the subjective probabilities of survival in the health and retirement study in the health and retirement study respondents were asked about the chances they would live to 75 or to 85 we analyze these responses to determine if they behave like probabilities of survival if their averages are close to average probabilities in the population and if they have correlations with other variables that are similar to correlations with actual mortality outcomes we find that generally they do behave like probabilities and that they do aggregate to population probabilities most remarkable however is that they covary with other variables in the same way actual outcomes vary with the variables for example respondents with higher socioeconomic status give higher probabilities of survival whereas respondents who smoke give lower probabilities we conclude that these measures of subjective probabilities have great potential use in models of intertemporal decision making under uncertainty

transfer benefits from public works employment evidence for rural india current knowledge provides little guidance on one of the key questions in evaluating public employment schemes aimed at directly reducing poverty what are the net income gains to participating workers this paper offers an answer for rural public employment in two villages in the state of maharashtra in india a model of intrahousehold time allocation is proposed and estimates are made using household data over six years the empirical implementation indicates that the projects induce significant behavioral responses transfer benefits are large and are greatly underestimated using prevailing market wage rates for similar work to estimate forgone incomes copyright 1994 by royal economic society

dimensions of civic activism and their effectiveness in exposing corruption evidence from italy this article studies the influence of civic activism in exposing corruption across italian regions using different dimensions of civic activism including local and national newspapers the intern

biased perceptions of income distribution and preferences for redistribution evidence from a survey experiment abstract individual perceptions of income distribution play a vital role in political economy and public finance models yet there is little evidence regarding their origins or accuracy this study examines how individuals form these perceptions and explores their potential impact on preferences for redistribution a tailored household survey provides original evidence on systematic biases in individuals evaluations of their own relative position in the income distribution the study discusses one of the mechanisms that may generate such biases based on the extrapolation of information from endogenous reference groups and presents some suggestive evidence that this mechanism has significant explanatory power the impact of these biased perceptions on attitudes toward redistributive policies is studied by means of an experimental design that was incorporated into the survey which provided consistent information on the own ranking within the income distribution to a randomly selected group of respondents the evidence suggests that those who had overestimated their relative position and thought that they were relatively richer than they were tend to demand higher levels of redistribution when informed of their true ranking

corruption in russia abstractwe analyze the determinants of corruption in russia using law enforcement data on corruption incidents for a panel of 79 russian regions for the period 2004 13 we find that the relative salaries of bureaucrats determine corruption levels corruption declines as relative salaries rise yet at strongly diminishing rates furthermore we show that even very limited media freedom helps to curtail corruption other important determinants are the strength of law enforcement education levels and unemployment rates

the labor market return to academic fraud abstract academic fraud by undergraduate students is pervasive but should it be taken seriously as an economic problem our research suggests so using a unique data set from the caucasus we estimate a large positive effect of academic fraud on the probability of employment econometrically we deal with endogenous selection into academic fraud and possible measurement error in the reporting of academic fraud using partial identification techniques the findings demonstrate that incentives to commit academic fraud are strong and point towards the potentially damaging consequences of academic fraud in broader settings

a conceptual framework for constructing a corruption diffusion index in this paper we propose a conceptual framework for constructing a diffusion index of changes in overall perceptions with respect to corruption the corruption diffusion index we construct lies between 0 the greatest overall deterioration in corruption perceptions and 100 the greatest overall improvement in corruption perceptions with 50 no change in corruption perceptions as the critical reference the proposed methodology is applied to the 2010 2011 global corruption barometer survey data possible refinements of the proposed methodology to capture the potentially multi dimensional nature of corruption and the practical challenges associated with the empirical implementation are discussed

collective action in diverse sierra leone communities scholars have identified ethnic divisions as a leading cause of underdevelopment due partially to their adverse effects on public goods we investigate this issue in post war sierra leone one of the world s poorest and most ethnically diverse countries to address concerns over endogenous local ethnic composition we use an instrumental variables strategy using earlier census data on ethnicity and include several historical and geographic covariates perhaps surprisingly we find that local diversity is not associated with worse public goods provision across multiple outcomes and specifications with precisely estimated zeros we investigate the role of historical factors in generating the findings

oil governance and the mis allocation of talent in developing countries this paper sheds light on the relationship between oil rent and the allocation of talent toward rent seeking versus more productive activities conditional on the quality of institutions using a sample of 69 developing countries we demonstrate that oil resources orient university students toward specializations that provide better future access to rents when institutions are weak the results are robust to various specifications datasets on governance quality and estimation methods oil affects the demand for each profession through a technological effect indicating complementarity between oil and engineering manufacturing and construction however it also increases the size of the cake therefore when institutions are weak oil increases the incentive to opt for professions with better access to rents law business and the social sciences rather than careers in engineering creating a deviation from the optimal allocation between the two types of specialization

corruption and the costs of redistribution micro evidence from indonesia this paper examines the degree to which the corruption in developing countries may impair the ability of governments to redistribute wealth among their citizens specifically i examine a large antipoverty program in indonesia that distributed subsidized rice to poor households i estimate the extent of corruption in the program by comparing administrative data on the amount of rice distributed with survey data on the amount actually received by households the central estimates suggest that on average at least 18 of the rice appears to have disappeared ethnically heterogeneous and sparsely populated areas are more likely to be missing rice using conservative assumptions for the marginal cost of public funds i estimate that the welfare losses from this corruption may have been large enough to offset the potential welfare gains from the redistributive intent of the program these findings suggest that corruption may impose substantial limitations on developing countries redistributive efforts and may help explain the low level of transfer programs in developing countries d 2005 elsevier b v all rights reserved

did iraq cheat the united nations underpricing bribes and the oil for food program from 1997 through 2003 the un oil for food program allowed iraq to export oil for humanitarian supplies we hypothesize that iraq deliberately set the price of its oil below market prices to solicit bribes from oil buyers by comparing the price gap between iraqi oil and its close substitutes during the program to the gap prior to the program we nd evidence of signican t underpricing our central estimate suggests that iraq collected 1 3 billion in bribes from underpricing its oil or 2 percent of oil revenues underpricing is higher during periods of high volatility in oil markets when detection is more dicult but declines after the un limited iraq s ability to set the price of its oil

distributional effects of corruption when enforcement is biased theory and evidence from bribery in schools in bangladesh in many models of corruption where enforcement is unbiased and the official maximizes her income the rich are more likely to pay bribes for their children s education implying that corruption reduces educational inequality we develop models of bribery that reflect the fact that in developing countries anti corruption enforcement is not unbiased and higher income of a household is associated with higher bargaining power and better quality of institutions in models of biased enforcement the rich are less likely to pay bribes making bribery regressive the ols estimates of the effects of household income are likely to find spurious progressivity in the incidence of bribery in schools we exploit temporary rainfall shocks to identify the ability to pay effect while long term rainfall differences identify the combined poor people and poor area effects the iv estimates show that the poor are more likely to pay bribes and the amount paid does not depend on household income the evidence rejects the ability to pay and related models based on unbiased enforcement and is consistent with the refusal to pay model of bargaining power where the rich decline to pay bribes free schooling is free only for the rich and corruption makes the playing field skewed against the poor

tax rates and tax evasion evidence from missing imports in china tax evasion by its very nature is difficult to observe we quantify the effects of tax rates on tax evasion by examining the relationship in china between the tariff schedule and the evasion gap which we define as the difference between hong kong s reported exports to china at the product level and china s reported imports from hong kong our results imply that a one percentage point increase in the tax rate is associated with a 3 percent increase in evasion furthermore the evasion gap is negatively correlated with tax rates on closely related products suggesting that evasion takes place partly through misclassification of imports from higher taxed categories to lower taxed ones in addition to underreporting the value of imports

self assessed vs statistical evidence of racial discrimination the case of indigenous australians this paper provides new insights on the labour market discrimination faced by indigenous australians one of the most disadvantaged indigenous populations in developed countries combining two large

corruption perceptions vs corruption reality abstract this paper examines the accuracy of corruption perceptions by comparing indonesian villagers reported perceptions about corruption in a road building project in their village with a more objective measure of missing expenditures in the project i find that villagers reported perceptions do contain real information and that villagers are sophisticated enough to distinguish between corruption in a particular road project and general corruption in the village the magnitude of the reported information however is small in part because officials hide corruption where it is hardest for villagers to detect i also find that there are biases in reported perceptions the findings illustrate the limitations of relying solely on corruption perceptions whether in designing anti corruption policies or in conducting empirical research on corruption

reshaping institutions evidence on aid impacts using a pre analysis plan this brief summarizes the results of a gender impact evaluation study entitled reshaping institutions evidence on aid impacts using a pre analysis plan conducted between 2005 and 2009 in sierra leone the study observed the impact of pre analysis plan pap on local institutions by imposing participation requirements for marginalized groups including women and test for learning by doing effects in sierra leone on the individual and village level requiring women and young adults to take on leadership positions participate in project meetings and sign off on project finances does not have any persistent effect on their participation in local decision making or attitudes regarding leadership ability the project successfully established village organizations and tools to manage the project the distributions of the project s benefits were equitable and leakage was minimal there was a significant positive impact on the stock and quality of local public infrastructure however there are no detectible changes in the ability to raise funds for local public goods decision making process or social norms and attitudes funding for the study derived from the gobifo project the institutional reform and capacity building project ircbp the world bank development impact evaluation dime the horace w goldsmith foundation the international growth center 3ie and the national bureau of economic research nber african successes project

packing a punch political action committees and corruption political action committees pacs are unique and prominent players in american politics yet formal research on some aspects of pacs is lacking using us data over the period 1970 to 2009 this research demonstrates that the growth in pacs is positively associated with greater corruption a 10 increase in the number of pacs per capita would increase corruption by about 8 upon disaggregation corporate pacs rather than labour pacs are positively associated with corruption the effects of economic prosperity government size and population on us corruption are generally in line with the literature

an axiomatic approach to the measurement of corruption theory and applications in this paper we demonstrate that the axiomatic measurement approach developed in the poverty and inequality literature can be usefully applied to the measurement of corruption we develop a conceptual framework for organizing corruption data and discuss several objective aggregate corruption measures consistent with axiomatic requirements we then provide an empirical application of the methodology and estimate the respective corruption measures for a sample of over 25 countries during the year of 2000 our empirical analysis reveals significant discrepancies between the country rankings generated by these measures and those provided by the corruption perception index cpi from transparency international to our knowledge this paper represents a first analysis of corruption measurement using an axiomatic framework

local capture evidence from a central government transfer program in uganda according to official statistics 20 percent of uganda s total public expenditure was spent on education in the mid 1990s most of it on primary education one of the large public programs was a capitation grant to cover schools nonwage expenditures using panel data from a unique survey of primary schools we assess the extent to which the grant actually reached the intended end user schools the survey data reveal that during 1991 1995 the schools on average received only 13 percent of the grants most schools received nothing the bulk of the school grant was captured by local officials and politicians the data also reveal considerable variation in grants received across schools suggesting that rather than being passive recipients of flows from the government schools use their bargaining power to secure greater shares of funding we find that schools in better off communities managed to claim a higher share of their entitlements as a result actual education spending in contrast to budget allocations is regressive similar surveys in other african countries confirm that uganda is not a special case

are they efficient in the middle using propensity score estimation for modeling middlemen in indian corporate corruption corrupt regulatory environment encourages firms to deploy middlemen for speedy and assured acquisition of different services from regulatory agencies using a world bank dataset of 2210 indian manufacturing firms this article examines how firms with middlemen deal with corrupt governmental agencies for its operational efficiency our results demonstrate that deployment of middlemen by the firms is often accompanied by a substantial increase in operational delay relatively trigger more consumption of senior management s time on regulatory disentanglement enhance the likelihood tendency to pay bribe and likely to face more court cases as a means of restitution of legal rights as firm specific attributes may contaminate our preliminary results we utilized the propensity score framework to examine relationships among variables of interests our study contributes to the inconspicuous part of the corruption literature by attempting to present a comprehensive but indirect assessment of the functions of middlemen that predominantly remained unattended except some scattered descriptive case based anecdotal presentations

natural resources institutional quality and economic growth in china the resource curse has been mainly studied using cross country samples in this paper we analyze a cross province sample from one country china we focus on the interplay between resource abundance institutional quality and economic growth using two different measures of resource abundance a stock resource reserves and a flow resource revenues and employing various econometric approaches including varying coefficient models we find that resource abundance has a positive effect on economic growth at the provincial level in china between 1990 and 2008 an effect that depends nonlinearly on institutional quality 1995 confidence in courts the west china development drive policy initiated in 2000 caused substantial changes which we investigate through a comparative panel data analysis

how accurate are surveyed preferences for public policies evidence from a unique institutional setup opinion polls and other surveys are used to capture public sentiments on a variety of issues if citizens are unwilling to reveal certain policy preferences to others surveys may fail to characterize population preferences accurately the innovation of this paper is to use unique data to measure survey biases for a broad range of policies i combine data on 184 referenda held in switzerland between 1987 and 2007 with postballot surveys that ask how the citizens voted for each proposal the dierence between stated preferences in the survey and revealed preferences at the ballot box provides a direct measure of survey bias i nd that these biases vary by policy areas with the largest occurring in

what determines corruption international evidence from microdata this paper uses a microlevel data set from 49 countries to create a direct measure of corruption which portrays the extent of bribery as revealed by individuals who live in those countries in addition it investigates the determinants of being asked for a bribe at the individual level the results show that both personal and country characteristics determine the risk of exposure to bribery examples are gender income education marital status the city size the country s unemployment rate average education and the strength of the institutions in the country jel k4 d73 p16

measuring corruption in china an expenditure based approach using household survey data most existing micro level empirical analyses of corruption rely on administrative records special purpose surveys or field experiments which can be difficult or very costly to obtain in some situations in this paper we apply an expenditure based method of quantifying the extent of corruption in a particular country using household survey data this method utilizes discrepancies between consumption and reported income to measure corruption another contribution of this paper is that it provides the first objective estimate of the extent of corruption in china we use a quadratic clothing expenditure function to estimate the extent of corruption in china in 2002

compensation contracts do agency theory assumptions predict negotiated agreements this study examined how the ability to monitor an agent s actions and environmental munificence affect compensation contracts in principal agent dyads in a laboratory experiment we tested predict

proxying for unobservable variables with internet document frequency the internet contains billions of documents we show that document frequencies in large decentralized textual databases can capture the cross sectional variation in the occurrence frequencies of social phenomena we characterize the econometric conditions under which such proxying is likely we also propose using recently introduced internet search volume indexes as proxies for fundamental locational traits and discuss their advantages and limitations we then successfully proxy for a number of economic and demographic variables in us cities and states we further obtain document frequency measures of corruption by country and us state and replicate the econometric results of previous research studying its covariates finally we provide the first measure of corruption in american cities poverty population size service sector orientation and ethnic fragmentation are shown to predict higher levels of corruption in urban america

food versus fuel extractive industries insecure land tenure and gaps in world food production summary corporations now go to the ends of the earth to extract natural resources like oil and diamonds from the earth at the same time that farmers investors and development experts try to expand the supply of food sometimes through large land acquisitions in remote regions these two processes of globalization interact in important ways cross national analyses indicate that oil and mineral dependent nations with neo patrimonial elites have lower than expected areas under cultivation and yields from cereal crops booms in extractive sectors and neo patrimonial practices in governance have debilitated agricultural enterprises within nations and conceivably throughout the globe

agency problems as antecedents to unrelated mergers and diversification amihud and lev reconsidered amihud and lev 1981 are widely cited as providing evidence that managers unless closely monitored by large block shareholders will attempt to reduce their employment risk through unrelated mergers and diversification these corporate strategies however may not be in shareholders interests reconsidering the agency assumptions underlying amihud and lev s study and the methodology they used we develop hypotheses regarding the association between ownership structure board vigilance corporate strategy and corporate performance from management theory and test them using amihud and lev s data from the 1960s and new data from the 1980s neither study supports the conclusions of amihud and lev nor the agency theory belief that monitoring efforts by principals affect the strategic behaviors of agents or the performance of firms that they manage 1998 john wiley sons ltd