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PROPOSAL FOR A NEW MEASURE OF CORRUPTION, ILLUSTRATED WITH ITALIAN DATA
Author(s) -
Golden Miriam A.,
Picci Lucio
Publication year - 2005
Publication title -
economics and politics
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.822
H-Index - 45
eISSN - 1468-0343
pISSN - 0954-1985
DOI - 10.1111/j.1468-0343.2005.00146.x
Subject(s) - measure (data warehouse) , language change , political science , computer science , computer security , data mining , philosophy , linguistics
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. Where the difference is larger between the monies spent and the existing physical infrastructure, more money is being siphoned off to mismanagement, fraud, bribes, kickbacks, and embezzlement; that is, corruption is greater. We create this measure for Italy's 95 provinces and 20 regions as of the mid‐1990s, controlling at the regional level for possible differences in the costs of public construction.