Research

Our experts in the CLEAR Lab have conducted a wide variety of corruption-related research.

 

 

 

Michael Gilbert

Corruption-related research highlights:

• "Transparency and Corruption: A General Analysis,"  2018 U. Chi. Legal F. 117 (2018). SSRN
• "Aggregate Corruption" (with Emily Reeder), 104 Ky. L.J. 651 (2016). SSRN 
• "The Coordination Fallacy" (with Brian Barnes), 43 Fla. St. U.L. Rev. 399 (2016). SSRN
• "Disclosure and Corruption" (with Benjamin Aiken), 14 Election L.J. 148 (2015). SSRN
• "The Problem of Voter Fraud," 115 Colum. L. Rev. 739 (2015). SSRN
• "Campaign Finance Disclosure and the Information Tradeoff," 98 Iowa L. Rev. 1847 (2013). SSRN

Other Writings:

• For Campaign Finance Violators, Crime Pays. Take Care. 2019. 

Daniel Gingerich

Corruption-related research highlights:

Book

Political Institutions and Party-Directed Corruption in South America: Stealing for the Team. 2013 (Cambridge University Press: Political Economy of Institutions and Decisions).

Peer-reviewed journal articles

• Ballot Reform as Suffrage Restriction: Evidence from Brazil’s Second Republic.  Forthcoming in the American Journal of Political Science.

• Lying About Corruption in Surveys: Evidence from a Joint Response Model (co-authored w/ Virginia Oliveros). Forthcoming in the International Journal of Public Opinion Research.

• When to Protect? Using the Crosswise Model to Integrate Protected and Direct Responses in Surveys of Sensitive Behavior (co-authored with Virginia Oliveros, Ana Corbacho, and Mauricio Ruiz-Vega). 2016. Political Analysis 24 (2): 132-156.

• Corruption as a Self-Fulfilling Prophecy: Evidence from a Survey Experiment in
  Costa Rica. (co-authored with Ana Corbacho, Virginia Oliveros, and Mauricio
  Ruiz-Vega). 2016. American Journal of Political Science 60 (4): 1077-1092.
• Brokered Politics in Brazil: An Empirical Analysis. 2014. Quarterly Journal of
  Political Science 9 (3): 269-300 (lead article).
• Yesterday’s Heroes, Today’s Villains: Ideology, Corruption, and Democratic
  Performance. 2014. Journal of Theoretical Politics 26 (2): 249-282.
• The Endurance and Eclipse of the Controlled Vote: A Formal Model of Vote
  Brokerage under the Secret Ballot (co-authored with Luis F. Medina) 2013.
  Economics and Politics 25 (3): 453-480.
• Governance Indicators and the Level of Analysis Problem: Empirical Findings
  from South America. 2013. British Journal of Political Science 43 (3): 505-540.
• Understanding Off-the-Books Politics: Conducting Inference on the Determinants
  of Sensitive Behavior with Randomized Response Surveys. 2010. Political
  Analysis 18: 349-380. (one of the journal’s six highly cited articles for publication year; see 
• Corruption and Political Decay: Evidence from Bolivia. 2009. Quarterly Journal
  of Political Science 4 (1): 1-34 (lead article).

• Ballot Structure, Political Corruption, and the Performance of Proportional
  Representation. 2009. Journal of Theoretical Politics 21 (4): 509-541. Reprinted
  in Michael Johnston, ed. Public Sector Corruption (Sage, 2010).

Chapters in edited volumes/non-peer reviewed articles

“Bolivia: Traditional Parties, the State, and the Toll of Corruption.” 2010. In Charles Blake and Steven Morris, eds., Corruption and Politics in Latin America: National and Regional Dynamics. Boulder: Lynne Rienner, 55-88.

Deborah Hellman

Corruption-related research highlights:

• "Liberty, Equality, Bribery, and Self-Government: Reframing the Campaign Finance Debate" in Kuhner & Mazo, eds., Democracy by the People: Reforming Campaign Finance in America (forthcoming 2018, Cambridge University Press). SSRN
• “A Theory of Bribery,” 38 Cardozo L. Rev. 1947 (2017). SSRN | HeinOnline (PDF)
• “Special Issue on Campaign Finance: Introduction: Problems in the Existing Jurisprudence” (with David Schultz), 164 U. Pa. L. Rev. Online 207 (2016). HeinOnline (PDF)
• “Defining Corruption and Constitutionalizing Democracy,” 111 Mich. L. Rev. 1385 (2013). SSRN | HeinOnline (PDF)
• “Politics and Terrorism: What Happens When Money Is Speech?,” 98 Va. L. Rev. In Brief71 (2012).
• “Money and Rights,” 35 N.Y.U. Rev. L. & Soc. Change 527 (2011).
• "Money Talks But It Isn’t Speech," 95 Minn. L. Rev. 953 (2011).
• Willfully Blind for Good Reason, Crim. Law and Philos. (2009) 3:301-316. 
• Understanding Bribery, in The Ethics of Criminal Law (Ferzan &Alexander eds., Palgrave McMillan Press, forthcoming 2019). 

David Singerman 

Corruption-related research highlights:

• “The Limits of Chemical Control in the Caribbean Sugar Factory,” Radical History Review 127 (January 2017), 
• “Science, Commodities, and Corruption in the Gilded Age”, Journal of the Gilded Age and Progressive Era (July 2016), 
• “Keynesian Eugenics and the Goodness of the World”, Journal of British Studies (July 2016), 
• “Inventing Purity in the Atlantic Sugar World, 1860-1930”, Enterprise and Society (December 2015), 
• “‘A Doubt is At Best an Unsafe Standard’: Measuring Sugar in the Early Bureau of Standards,” NIST Journal of Research 112, no. 1 (January 2007), 

Newspapers

• “The Shady History of Big Sugar,” op-ed in The New York Times, 17 September 2016

Sandip Sukhtankar

Corruption-related research highlights:

• “Building State Capacity: Evidence from Biometric Smartcards in India” (with Karthik Muralidharan and Paul Niehaus), American Economic Review, vol 106, no 10, pp 2895-2929, Oct 2016.
• “Corruption in India: Bridging Research Evidence and Policy Options” (with Milan Vaishnav), Brookings-NCAER India Policy Forum 2014, Jul 2015.
• “The Impact of Corruption on Consumer Markets: Evidence from the Allocation of 2G Wireless Spectrum in India,” Journal of Law and Economics, vol 58, no 1, pp 75-108, Feb 2015.
• “Corruption Dynamics: The Golden Goose Effect” (with Paul Niehaus).
• American Economic Journal: Economic Policy, vol 5, no 4, pp 230-69, Nov 2013
• Awarded the 2014 American Economic Journal: Economic Policy best paper prize by the American Economic Association
• “The Marginal Rate of Corruption in Public Programs” (with Paul Niehaus).
• Journal of Public Economics, vol 104, pp 52-64, Aug 2013.
• “Sweetening the Deal? Political Connections and Sugar Mills in India.”
• American Economic Journal: Applied Economics, vol 4, no 3, pp 43-63, Jul 2012.

Op-eds and policy memos

• “Building State Capacity for Better Programme Implementation: Lessons from the Andhra Pradesh Smartcard Programme” (with Karthik Muralidharan, and Paul Niehaus). Ideas for India, December 2014.
• “The Sweet Spot” Op-ed, The Indian Express, November 14, 2014.
• “Because the Price was Right” Op-ed, The Indian Express, February 18, 2014.
• (Original title: “The Final Episode of the 2G Saga?”)
• “Two Questions about the 2G Scam” Ideas for India, March 2013.
• “Corruption in MGNREGA”, Ideas for India, July 2012.

Silvia Tidey

Corruption-related research highlights:

• 2019 CADS Research Seminar - Poetics and Poiesis: Navigating corruption in the intimate space between public secret and intimate knowledge
• Forthcoming A tale of two mayors: configurations of care and corruption in eastern Indonesian direct district head elections. Current Anthropology.
• 2016 Between the ethical and the right thing: how (not) to be corrupt in Indonesian bureaucracy in an age of good governance. American Ethnologist 43(4): 663-676.
• 2013 Corruption and adherence to rules in the construction sector: reading the "bidding books". American Anthropologist 115(2): 188-202.