Monitoring corruption
Subtitle: evidence from a field experiment in Indonesia
By: Benjamin A. Olken.
Contributors: National Bureau of Economic Research.
Series: NBER working paper series ;; working paper 11753; Working paper series (National Bureau of Economic Research : Online) ;; working paper no. 11753.
Publisher: National Bureau of Economic Research
Published: 2005
Place of publication: Cambridge, MA
Language: eng
Format: Electronic resource
Subjects: Political corruption -- Indonesia.; Roads -- Design and construction -- Political aspects -- Indonesia.
Description: "This paper uses a randomized field experiment to examine several approaches to reducing corruption.  I measure missing expenditures in over 600 village road projects in Indonesia by having engineers independently estimate the prices and quantities of all inputs used in each road, and then comparing these estimates to villages' official expenditure reports.  I find that announcing an increased probability of a government audit, from a baseline of 4 percent to 100 percent, reduced missing expenditures by about 8 percentage points, more than enough to make these audits cost-effective.  By contrast, I find that increasing grass-roots participation in the monitoring process only reduced missing wages, with no effect on missing materials expenditures.  Since materials account for three-quarters of total expenditures, increasing grass-roots participation had little impact overall.  The findings suggest that grass-roots monitoring may be subject to free-rider problems.  Overall, the results suggest that traditional top-down monitoring can play an important role in reducing corruption, even in a highly corrupt environment"--National Bureau of Economic Research web site.
Notes: Includes bibliographical references.
Title from PDF file as viewed on 12/8/2005.
Also available in print.
System requirements: Adobe Acrobat Reader.
Mode of access: World Wide Web.