When organizations have limited accountability, antifraud measures, including auditing, often face barriers due to institutional resistance and practical difficulties on the ground. This is especially true in development aid, where aid organizations face incentives to suppress information about...

A classic problem in public finance is the over-expenditure of local governments in expectation of a bailout from higher-level administrations. While monitoring could mitigate agency problems, it can itself be rendered ineffective if auditors are corruptible. I evaluate whether limiting...

The US spends more than 4 trillion dollars per year on health care, largely conducted by private providers and reimbursed by insurers. A major concern in this system is overbilling, waste and fraud by providers, who face incentives to misreport on their claims in order to receive higher...

Audits are a common mechanism used by governments to monitor public spending. In this paper, we discuss the effectiveness of auditing with theory and empirics. In our model, the value of audits depends on both the underlying presence of abuse and the government's ability to observe it and...