Misunderestimating Corruption
Corruption estimates rely largely on self-reports of affected individuals and officials. Yet, survey respondents are often reticent to tell the truth about sensitive subjects, leading to downward biases in survey-based corruption estimates. This paper develops a method to estimate the prevalence of...
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MIT Press
2016
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| Online Access: | http://hdl.handle.net/10986/23941 |
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okr-10986-239412021-05-25T10:54:43Z Misunderestimating Corruption Kraay, Aart Murrell, Peter corruption reticence randomized response technique Corruption estimates rely largely on self-reports of affected individuals and officials. Yet, survey respondents are often reticent to tell the truth about sensitive subjects, leading to downward biases in survey-based corruption estimates. This paper develops a method to estimate the prevalence of reticent behavior and reticence-adjusted rates of corruption using survey responses to sensitive questions. A statistical model captures how respondents answer a combination of conventional and random-response questions, allowing identification of the effect of reticence. GMM and maximum-likelihood estimates are obtained for ten countries. Adjusting for reticence dramatically alters the perceptions of the extent of corruption. 2016-03-11T17:43:14Z 2016-03-11T17:43:14Z 2016 Journal Article Review of Economics and Statistics http://hdl.handle.net/10986/23941 en_US CC BY-NC-ND 3.0 IGO http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0/igo World Bank MIT Press Publications & Research :: Journal Article Publications & Research |
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Digital Repository |
| institution_category |
Foreign Institution |
| institution |
Digital Repositories |
| building |
World Bank Open Knowledge Repository |
| collection |
World Bank |
| language |
en_US |
| topic |
corruption reticence randomized response technique |
| spellingShingle |
corruption reticence randomized response technique Kraay, Aart Murrell, Peter Misunderestimating Corruption |
| description |
Corruption estimates rely largely on self-reports of affected individuals and officials. Yet, survey respondents are often reticent to tell the truth about sensitive subjects, leading to downward biases in survey-based corruption estimates. This paper develops a method to estimate the prevalence of reticent behavior and reticence-adjusted rates of corruption using survey responses to sensitive questions. A statistical model captures how respondents answer a combination of conventional and random-response questions, allowing identification of the effect of reticence. GMM and maximum-likelihood estimates are obtained for ten countries. Adjusting for reticence dramatically alters the perceptions of the extent of corruption. |
| format |
Journal Article |
| author |
Kraay, Aart Murrell, Peter |
| author_facet |
Kraay, Aart Murrell, Peter |
| author_sort |
Kraay, Aart |
| title |
Misunderestimating Corruption |
| title_short |
Misunderestimating Corruption |
| title_full |
Misunderestimating Corruption |
| title_fullStr |
Misunderestimating Corruption |
| title_full_unstemmed |
Misunderestimating Corruption |
| title_sort |
misunderestimating corruption |
| publisher |
MIT Press |
| publishDate |
2016 |
| url |
http://hdl.handle.net/10986/23941 |
| _version_ |
1764455225384501248 |