Corruption is usually viewed as an impediment to investment and growth. However, China's experience suggests that the issue is probably more complex: In the past government officials would go out of their way to promote investment and development. But since the start of a far-reaching...

Corruption has challenged the legitimacy of political institutions that exist today and has led to political unrest in Kenya over the years. Bad governance and a lack of transparency in the public sector is one of the main contributors of corruption in Kenya. This paper delves into corruption...

A number of popular notions and outright myths on governance and corruption are addressed in this chapter. We distinguish clearly between governance and anti-corruption, while probing the links between both notions. In so doing we challenge the conventional definition of corruption as being too...

Previous research shows that decentralization plays a key role in the reduction of damage caused by natural disasters. The effect of decentralization will differ according a country’s level of economic development. To investigate this matter further, this paper attempts to investigate how...

Using data from a field experiment across 500 villages in Afghanistan, we study how electoral accountability of local institutions affects the quality of governance. Food aid distribution was organized to obtain outcomes that are comparable across villages with different structures of...