The monopoly position of the public bureaucracy in providing public services allows government employees to acquire rents. Those rents can involve higher wages, monetary and non-monetary fringe benefits (e.g. pensions and staffing), and/or bribes. We propose a direct measure to capture the total...

We use high-quality panel data on corruption convictions, new panels of assistant U.S. attorneys and relative public sector wages, and careful attention to the consequences of modeling endogeneity to estimate the impact of prosecutorial resources on criminal convictions of those who undertake...

Standard anticorruption interventions consist of intensified monitoring and sanctioning. Rooted in principal-agent theory, these interventions are based on the assumption that corrupt acts follow a rational cost-benefit calculation by gain-seeking individuals. Given their mixed results, however,...

Enforcement agencies issuing warnings are an empirical regularity in the enforcement of laws and regulations, but a challenge to the standard economic theory of public enforcement. A number of recent contributions explain the popularity of warnings as a response to information asymmetries...

This paper has adopted the exploratory case study method of analyzing a few recent cases of public procurement irregularities on Indian Railways documented by the vigilance departments and the CAG available in public domain to inquire into the following issues: (a) how do irregularities and...

We explore the role of tax administrations in the fight against inequality through data analysis of a survey consisting of 71 questions that we have designed and sent to the tax administrations of all EU Member States. The survey focuses mainly on the capacity concerning the enforcement of tax...

Customs administrations in developing countries increasingly use risk-based techniques relying on data mining and statistical scoring. By demonstrating the value of using data analysis techniques to orient frontline controls so as to facilitate legal trade and combat fraud more effectively,...

The adoption of the euro in 2002 led to an unprecedented supply of cheap mortgage credit in Greece and Spain. The housing bubbles that ensued amplified developers' incentives to offer bribes for illegal construction projects. We exploit the mortgage credit windfall as the shock that induced...

Corruption has become an increasingly salient issue in India today, spawning both enormous interest from the media as well as a large amount of academic research. Yet there is a large gap between what has captured the media's attention, the policy options under discussion, and the actual...

This short piece discusses recent (internal) Justice Department guidance for attorneys handling False Claims (FCA) Act cases. In a dramatic policy and practice shift, the memorandum recommends that “when evaluating a recommendation to decline intervention in a qui tam action, attorneys should...