This paper examines if money matters in education by looking at whether missing resources due to corruption affect student outcomes. We use data from the auditing of Brazil's local governments to construct objective measures of corruption involving educational block grants transferred from the...

We assess the effect of Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) laws on public corruption in the United States. Specifically, we investigate the impact of switching from a weak to a strong state-level FOIA law on corruption convictions of state and local government officials. The evidence suggests...

Manipulation of government finances for the benefit of narrowly defined groups is usually thought to be limited to the part of the budget over which politicians exercise discretion in the short run, such as earmarks. Analyzing a revenue-sharing program between the central and local governments...

In this paper we argue that innovations in governance of social services are an effective way to improve outcomes such as attainment of universal primary education. To test this hypothesis we exploit an unusual policy experiment: a newspaper campaign in Uganda aimed at reducing the capture of...

We test the premise of the theoretical literature that M-form political hierarchies are effective in creating yardstick competition between regional divisions only when those divisions have sufficiently diversified or similar industrial composition. The reason for this is that the competition...

When firms' research can lead to potentially harmful innovations, public intervention may thwart their incentives to undertake research by reducing its expected profitability (average deterrence) and may guide the use of innovation (marginal deterrence). We compare four policy regimes: laissez...

We study the interaction between competitive markets and income redistribution that reallocates unequal pre-tax market incomes away from the rich to the poor majority. In one setup, participants earn their income by trading in a double auction (DA) with exogenous zero or full redistribution. In...

Optimal fiscal policy depends on the marginal benefits of public spending. In developing countries corrupt officials often embezzle funds, so optimal policy should reflect marginal corruption. We analyze marginal corruption in the context of a statutory wage increase in India's employment...

We analyze stock market reactions to announcements of political appointments from the private sector and corporate appointments of former government officials. Using unique data on corporate affiliations and announcements of all Senate-confirmed U.S. Defense Department appointees of six...

We consider the problem faced by firms operating in a foreign country characterized by weak governance. Our focus is on extortion based on the threat of expropriation and bureaucratic harassment. The bureaucrat's bargaining power is characterized by a general extortion mechanism adapted from the...