IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/rug/rugwps/21-1034.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Statistical footprints of corruption:“Vanity Fair” of automobile license plates in Russia

Author

Listed:
  • Tom Eeckhout
  • Timur Natkhov
  • Leonid Polishchuk
  • Koen Schoors
  • Kevin Hoefman

Abstract

We offer a novel big data approach to corruption detection and measurement by using statistical anomalies in publicly observable allocations which corruption affects in a predictable manner. While each individual incidence of corruption remains undetectable under the veil of secrecy, systemic corruption changes distributions of observable outcomes, and thus leaves measurable statistical footprints. We apply this approach to measuring corruption in Russian traffic police, which issues automobile license plates. Some of such plates serve as signs of status and prestige, and they are heavily concentrated among more expensive and especially luxury classes and brands, whereas if the official rules were followed, the distributions should have been close to uniform. Such discrepancies provide evidence-based measures of corruption in traffic police, which exhibit significant correlation with road accidents, injuries and fatalities.

Suggested Citation

  • Tom Eeckhout & Timur Natkhov & Leonid Polishchuk & Koen Schoors & Kevin Hoefman, 2021. "Statistical footprints of corruption:“Vanity Fair” of automobile license plates in Russia," Working Papers of Faculty of Economics and Business Administration, Ghent University, Belgium 21/1034, Ghent University, Faculty of Economics and Business Administration.
    • Handle: RePEc:rug:rugwps:21/1034
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://wps-feb.ugent.be/Papers/wp_21_1034.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Simeon Djankov & Rafael La Porta & Florencio Lopez-de-Silanes & Andrei Shleifer, 2002. "The Regulation of Entry," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 117(1), pages 1-37.
    2. Albert Saiz & Uri Simonsohn, 2013. "Proxying For Unobservable Variables With Internet Document-Frequency," Journal of the European Economic Association, European Economic Association, vol. 11(1), pages 137-165, February.
    3. Filip Novokmet & Thomas Piketty & Gabriel Zucman, 2018. "From Soviets to oligarchs: inequality and property in Russia 1905-2016," The Journal of Economic Inequality, Springer;Society for the Study of Economic Inequality, vol. 16(2), pages 189-223, June.
    4. Raymond Fisman & Edward Miguel, 2007. "Corruption, Norms, and Legal Enforcement: Evidence from Diplomatic Parking Tickets," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 115(6), pages 1020-1048, December.
    5. Serguey Braguinsky & Sergey Mityakov & Andrey Liscovich, 2014. "Direct Estimation of Hidden Earnings: Evidence from Russian Administrative Data," Journal of Law and Economics, University of Chicago Press, vol. 57(2), pages 281-319.
    6. Miriam A. Golden & Lucio Picci, 2005. "Proposal For A New Measure Of Corruption, Illustrated With Italian Data," Economics and Politics, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 17(1), pages 37-75, March.
    7. Olken, Benjamin A., 2009. "Corruption perceptions vs. corruption reality," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 93(7-8), pages 950-964, August.
    8. L. Polishchuk & O. Shchetinin & O. Shestoperov., 2008. "Intermediaries between Private Sector and the Government: Helping Business or Participating in Corruption?," VOPROSY ECONOMIKI, N.P. Redaktsiya zhurnala "Voprosy Economiki", vol. 3.
    9. Tom Truyts, 2010. "Social Status In Economic Theory," Journal of Economic Surveys, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 24(1), pages 137-169, February.
    10. Kaufmann, Daniel & Kraay, Aart & Mastruzzi, Massimo, 2010. "The worldwide governance indicators : methodology and analytical issues," Policy Research Working Paper Series 5430, The World Bank.
    11. Di Tella, Rafael & Schargrodsky, Ernesto, 2003. "The Role of Wages and Auditing during a Crackdown on Corruption in the City of Buenos Aires," Journal of Law and Economics, University of Chicago Press, vol. 46(1), pages 269-292, April.
    12. Pranab Bardhan, 2004. "Scarcity, Conflicts, and Cooperation: Essays in the Political and Institutional Economics of Development," MIT Press Books, The MIT Press, edition 1, volume 1, number 0262524295, December.
    13. Rose-Ackerman,Susan & Palifka,Bonnie J., 2016. "Corruption and Government," Cambridge Books, Cambridge University Press, number 9781107081208.
    14. Knack, Stephen, 2006. "Measuring corruption in Eastern Europe and Central Asia : a critique of the cross-country indicators," Policy Research Working Paper Series 3968, The World Bank.
    15. Sandra Sequeira, 2016. "Corruption, Trade Costs, and Gains from Tariff Liberalization: Evidence from Southern Africa," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 106(10), pages 3029-3063, October.
    16. Gorodnichenko, Yuriy & Sabirianova Peter, Klara, 2007. "Public sector pay and corruption: Measuring bribery from micro data," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 91(5-6), pages 963-991, June.
    17. Maxim Mironov, 2013. "Taxes, Theft, and Firm Performance," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 68(4), pages 1441-1472, August.
    18. Rose-Ackerman,Susan & Palifka,Bonnie J., 2016. "Corruption and Government," Cambridge Books, Cambridge University Press, number 9781107441095.
    19. Eric Zitzewitz, 2012. "Forensic Economics," Journal of Economic Literature, American Economic Association, vol. 50(3), pages 731-769, September.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Nicolas Campos & Eduardo Engel & Ronald D. Fischer & Alexander Galetovic, 2019. "Renegotiations and corruption in infrastructure: The Odebrecht case," "Marco Fanno" Working Papers 0230, Dipartimento di Scienze Economiche "Marco Fanno".
    2. Fonseca-Mairena, María Haydée & Triossi, Matteo, 2019. "Incentives and implementation in marriage markets with externalities," Economics Letters, Elsevier, vol. 185(C).
    3. Gans-Morse, Jordan & Borges, Mariana & Makarin, Alexey & Mannah-Blankson, Theresa & Nickow, Andre & Zhang, Dong, 2018. "Reducing bureaucratic corruption: Interdisciplinary perspectives on what works," World Development, Elsevier, vol. 105(C), pages 171-188.
    4. Roberto Burguet & Juan-José Ganuza & José García-Montalvo, 2016. "The Microeconomics of Corruption. A Review of Thirty Years of Research," Working Papers 908, Barcelona School of Economics.
    5. Yan Leung Cheung & P. Raghavendra Rau & Aris Stouraitis, 2012. "How much do firms pay as bribes and what benefits do they get? Evidence from corruption cases worldwide," NBER Working Papers 17981, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    6. Braguinsky, Serguey & Mityakov, Sergey, 2015. "Foreign corporations and the culture of transparency: Evidence from Russian administrative data," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 117(1), pages 139-164.
    7. Hamilton, Alexander, 2013. "Small is beautiful, at least in high-income democracies: the distribution of policy-making responsibility, electoral accountability, and incentives for rent extraction," Policy Research Working Paper Series 6305, The World Bank.
    8. Paul Collier & Martina Kirchberger & Måns Söderbom, 2016. "The Cost of Road Infrastructure in Low- and Middle-Income Countries," The World Bank Economic Review, World Bank, vol. 30(3), pages 522-548.
    9. Hai Zhong, 2018. "Measuring Corruption in China: An Expenditure‐based Approach Using Household Survey Data," Economica, London School of Economics and Political Science, vol. 85(338), pages 383-405, April.
    10. Arteaga, Fernando & Desierto, Desiree & Koyama, Mark, 2024. "Shipwrecked by rents," Journal of Development Economics, Elsevier, vol. 168(C).
    11. Calogero Guccio & Domenico Lisi & Ilde Rizzo, 2019. "When the purchasing officer looks the other way: on the waste effects of debauched local environment in public works execution," Economics of Governance, Springer, vol. 20(3), pages 205-236, September.
    12. Eugen Dimant & Guglielmo Tosato, 2018. "Causes And Effects Of Corruption: What Has Past Decade'S Empirical Research Taught Us? A Survey," Journal of Economic Surveys, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 32(2), pages 335-356, April.
    13. Leonard Hoeft & Wladislaw Mill & Alexander Vostroknutov, 2019. "Normative Perception of Power Abuse," Discussion Paper Series of the Max Planck Institute for Research on Collective Goods 2019_06, Max Planck Institute for Research on Collective Goods.
    14. Günther G. Schulze & Bambang Suharnoko Sjahrir & Nikita Zakharov, 2016. "Corruption in Russia," Journal of Law and Economics, University of Chicago Press, vol. 59(1), pages 135-171.
    15. Joseph Pozsgai-Alvarez & Iván Pastor Sanz, 2021. "Mapping the (anti-)corruption field: key topics and changing trends, 1968–2020," Journal of Computational Social Science, Springer, vol. 4(2), pages 851-881, November.
    16. Akbari, Mahsa & Bahrami-Rad, Duman & Kimbrough, Erik O., 2019. "Kinship, fractionalization and corruption," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 166(C), pages 493-528.
    17. Fang, Hanming & Gu, Quanlin & Zhou, Li-An, 2019. "The gradients of power: Evidence from the Chinese housing market," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 176(C), pages 32-52.
    18. Dávid-Barrett, Elizabeth & Fazekas, Mihály, 2020. "Anti-corruption in aid-funded procurement: Is corruption reduced or merely displaced?," World Development, Elsevier, vol. 132(C).
    19. Julia M. Puaschunder & Dirk Beerbaum, 2020. "The Future of Healthcare around the World: Four indices integrating Technology, Productivity, Anti-Corruption, Healthcare and Market Financialization," Proceedings of the 18th International RAIS Conference, August 17-18, 2020 021jpmd, Research Association for Interdisciplinary Studies.
    20. Sazzadul Arefin, 2019. "Geographic Endowment, Corruption, and Economic Development," Business and Economic Research, Macrothink Institute, vol. 9(1), pages 1-32, March.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    Corruption; Police; Law Enforcement; Administrative data; Forensic Economics;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • K13 - Law and Economics - - Basic Areas of Law - - - Tort Law and Product Liability; Forensic Economics
    • K42 - Law and Economics - - Legal Procedure, the Legal System, and Illegal Behavior - - - Illegal Behavior and the Enforcement of Law
    • O17 - Economic Development, Innovation, Technological Change, and Growth - - Economic Development - - - Formal and Informal Sectors; Shadow Economy; Institutional Arrangements
    • P37 - Political Economy and Comparative Economic Systems - - Socialist Institutions and Their Transitions - - - Legal

    NEP fields

    This paper has been announced in the following NEP Reports:

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:rug:rugwps:21/1034. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Nathalie Verhaeghe (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/ferugbe.html .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.