A special treat for my sky-is-falling-from-corruption nemeses. An excerpt from an ODI briefing paper on risks involved in using cash in humanitarian emergencies: The largest
It’s easy to despair at the patronage, vote-buying, and authoritarian turn being taken in so many new democracies. Surely democracy was different in the West? I give you
One of the topics I’m most notorious for blogging about is the topic I know the least about: corruption. Basically, I’ve said it’s a second
I agree with Bill Gates: corruption is a second order development issue at best. A commenter pushes back: I think both Gates and Blattman are being
Here is a conjecture: corruption is a way for many economists and policymakers to talk about bad political outcomes without talking about politics. As long
Should foreign donors care about corruption in developing countries? In my comment on David Cameron’s development vision, I called corruption an Anglo-American fetish. Westerners care about corruption
We provide experimental evidence that information about copious corruption not only decreases incumbent support in local elections in Mexico, but also decreases voter turnout, challengers’
Everyone is talking about corruption in Southern Sudan. It’s on the radio; leaders talk about corruption. But it’s not clear that people understand what it
The Vanguard newspaper in Lagos highlights a discouraging trend of Nigerian lawmakers declaring greater personal assets than they currently posses in order to build in
As I emerged from a meeting with the head of Liberia’s statistics agency, I spotted the following newspaper on the waiting room table: Why, I
A relative latecomer to the blog scene, I have only recently discovered Italian comedian cum political activist Beppe Grillo, who denounces political wrongdoing in his
More than half the world lives in cities, and a lot of those cities (especially those in the Americas) are plagued with homicides and crime.
This New York Times article on Gerhard Schröder’s entanglements with Russia and Putin is justifiably gaining attention. It’s a good piece. I still remember Tyler
Alex Tabarrok had a great interview on Ezra Klein’s podcast. A lot of it is on what we learn from Mancur Olson about the current
It was about the beginning of September, 1664, that I, among the rest of my neighbours, heard in ordinary discourse that the plague was returned
Guest post by Jeff Mosenkis of Innovations for Poverty Action. There’s a lot of basic social science documenting humanity’s flaws, biases, and injustices, but less
Guest post by Jeff Mosenkis of Innovations for Poverty Action. A quick housekeeping item, if you haven’t seen. Chris migrated his site to new
Guest post by Jeff Mosenkis of Innovations for Poverty Action. In The New Yorker, John Cassidy reviews a new free online open-source economics textbook, The
Guest post by Jeff Mosenkis of Innovations for Poverty Action. North Korea’s surprising, lucrative relationship with Africa (via Kim Yi Dionne) In an inexplicable lapse
