We study incumbency effects for individual legislators from two political parties (Christian Democracy and the Italian Socialist Party) in Italy’s lower house of representatives over ten legislatures (1948–1992). Results of a regression discontinuity design adapted to multimember...

Standard cross-national measures of corruption are assembled through surveys. We propose a novel alternative objective measure that consists of the difference between a measure of the physical quantities of public infrastructure and the cumulative price government pays for public capital stocks....

Why have anti-corruption efforts often failed? Current thinking on corruption has largely overlooked the profound implications of its contested nature, which paradoxically makes it an effective yet highly dysfunctional 'tool of government.' As a tool of government, it helps execute policies and...