This dissertation is about how the state influences individuals’ behavior by giving certain citizens the legal and physical means to coerce other citizens. Using field experimentation, participatory observation, and time-series analysis of two large sets of micro-data on crime to study policing in West Africa and Melanesia, the findings challenge conventional wisdom about the relationship between coercion, corruption, and the state. Empowering women by sending police officers to assist them in disputes with men may not necessarily reduce gender-based coercion, because men can preserve their privileges by drawing on alternative authorities. Conferring police officers powers to coerce other people does not necessarily induce corrupt behavior, because conferral of power may cause them to care more about their reputation than the rents they can extract. Competitive elections may not reduce petty police corruption even if they make principals accountable; instead, elections may incentivize corruption by increasing agents’ uncertainty about how principals will act in the future. These findings contribute new insights to the theory of state-building, accountability, and bureaucratic politics.

This thesis analyzes if there, given the size of the informal sector, is an effect of corruption on income inequality, here defined as the Palma ratio. Estimations are done with a fixed effects ordinary least squares regression using panel data for 19 federal states of Brazil over every other year between 2006-2014. The results provide evidence that corruption increases income inequality when the informal sector is smaller than 37.97%, but decreases inequality when the informal sector exceeds 55.34%. The findings are robust to several sensitivity checks. The gained insight of the relationship between corruption and income inequalityusing a microeconomic perspective is the main academic contribution of this thesis.

Orientador(a): Márcia Teixeira de Souza / Banca: Maria Teresa Micelli Kerbauy / Banca: Simone Diniz / Resumo: Criadas no bojo dos controles institucionais, como um instrumento para os partidos de oposição exercer o direito de investigar, as comissões parlamentares de inquérito (CPIs) são procedimentos de fiscalização e servem para equalizar as ações e o exercício das funções do Estado. Observando a história brasileira, constata-se, que, os instrumentos idealizados para os controles, os procedimentos institucionais passam sempre por um controle político para que sejam utilizados. Neste sentido a questão central deste trabalho é compreender a arquitetura institucional formada pelas coalizões do governo Lula (2003 -2010), buscando traçar uma relação entre as influências da coalizão construída pelo executivo afim de edificar sua governabilidade e o modo como esta coalizão foi gerida no que se refere na sua atuação no caso Mensalão. Tal problematização fundamenta-se na hipótese de que a mudança de padrão de governabilidade também acaba por influir no controle político dos procedimentos de controle institucional. Conclui-se que por meio das normas e procedimentos, passíveis de interpretações subjetivas e de interesses de grupos, acrescida do cunho eminentemente político do legislativo, nem sempre essas comissões produzem o resultado esperado (o controle). Além disso, a atuação política torna-se complexa, pois uma vez que os procedimentos possam ser utilizados para, no contexto das CPIs, como uma moeda de troca institucional ou como uma forma de ataque a uma oposição, perde-se o princípio n... (Resumo completo, clicar acesso eletrônico abaixo) / Abstract: Created within the framework of institutional controls as an instrument for opposition parties to exercise the right to investigate, parliamentary committees of inquiry (CPIs) are enforcement procedures and serve to equalize the actions and exercise of state functions. Observing the Brazilian history, it is verified that there are instruments idealized for the controls, since the institutions always pass for a political control so that they are used. In this sense, the central issue of this paper is to discuss the relationship between management and coalition building, the logic of coalition presidentialism, and the way in which these coalitions influence institutional control procedures, in this case the CPIs. This problematization is based on the hypothesis that the change in management pattern of the coalitions also ends up influencing the political control of the institutional control procedures. It is preliminarily concluded that, through norms and procedures, subject to subjective interpretations, added by the eminently political nature of legislative houses, they do not always produce the expected result (control). In addition, political action becomes complex, since once the procedures can be used, in the context of the IPCs, as a currency of institutional exchange or as a form of attack against an opposition, the guiding principle of control is lost And the functioning thereof. Therefore, there are procedural means that, if a numerical majority is guaranteed through the support groups, it will be possible to interfere in the occurrence of commissions, since procedurally the existence of a limit of requests for CPIs may favor the majority coalition / Mestre

There is a widespread public perception of corruption in Liberia's election process, yet there is little documentation on the characteristics of voters and their perceptions of electoral corruption. The purpose of this correlational study was to explore the relationship between gender, ethnicity, physical location, and perceptions about political activity during the 2005 national election. Roderick Chisolm's conceptualization of the internalist view of justification served as the theoretical construct. Data were acquired from the Afrobarometer survey (n = 1,200), which used a representative cross-sectional sample design, and were subjected to cross-tabulation analysis, a chi-square test, and a correlation analysis. The results of the analysis indicated that elections were perceived as unfair and that gender was an important predictor of perception. The analysis revealed that 26.8% of women perceived the National Election Commission as untrustworthy and 79.0% reported that they did not feel completely free to choose their preferred candidate. A chi-square test of association confirmed that among males, the belief that elections are free and fair was statistically significant (p = .002), though not for females (p = .151). Gender was moderately correlated (r = .088) with corruption of government officials. It was also found that the theoretical construct may explain the behavior of elected officials, but was not predictive of voter engagement. Recommendations to remedy this problem include widespread election reform that focuses on combating negative perceptions of voters, particularly among women, and correcting technical irregularities in Liberia's electoral processes.

<p>In many countries poverty is widespread, and so is also corruption. Foreign aid is given to countries in need to combat poverty, but unfortunately corruption has a restraining effect on the effectiveness of aid. The aim of this thesis is to examine how Sida, the Swedish International Development Cooperation Agency, handles the issue of aid and corruption in the Babati District, Tanzania, where a field study were made, and what methods there are to handle this issue. The method used for this study is qualitative interviews in Tanzania and Sweden, and a literature study of previous research. The results indicate that corruption is a problem in the Babati District and that Sida is well aware of the existence of corruption in recipient countries, and the problems connected to it. Sida has prepared anti-corruption documents and regulations to use during cooperation with developing countries, and the agency is partly giving aid that reduces corruption and builds democracy. Previous research shows that there are additional methods to utilize that increases the effectiveness of aid, than Sida is currently using. One method that is well-founded is to withdraw all financial aid to countries with widespread corruption, and only focus on non-financial aid to decrease money flows and to build functioning public institutions. When corruption is eliminated, financial aid will be more effective and private investors will be attracted, and thus poverty reduction will increase.</p>

In many countries poverty is widespread, and so is also corruption. Foreign aid is given to countries in need to combat poverty, but unfortunately corruption has a restraining effect on the effectiveness of aid. The aim of this thesis is to examine how Sida, the Swedish International Development Cooperation Agency, handles the issue of aid and corruption in the Babati District, Tanzania, where a field study were made, and what methods there are to handle this issue. The method used for this study is qualitative interviews in Tanzania and Sweden, and a literature study of previous research. The results indicate that corruption is a problem in the Babati District and that Sida is well aware of the existence of corruption in recipient countries, and the problems connected to it. Sida has prepared anti-corruption documents and regulations to use during cooperation with developing countries, and the agency is partly giving aid that reduces corruption and builds democracy. Previous research shows that there are additional methods to utilize that increases the effectiveness of aid, than Sida is currently using. One method that is well-founded is to withdraw all financial aid to countries with widespread corruption, and only focus on non-financial aid to decrease money flows and to build functioning public institutions. When corruption is eliminated, financial aid will be more effective and private investors will be attracted, and thus poverty reduction will increase.

This paper analyses how corruption in a host country affects the amount of Foreign Direct Investment (FDI) it receives. It discusses a model in which FDI is explained by GDP, corruption and the distance between the host country and the origin of capital. It then runs a regression comparing FDI from developed to 46 developing countries, which shows that corruption is a significant variable and it does have a negative effect on total FDI. It then compares if there are any difference depending on the origin of Capital, comparing USA, Europe and Japan. Capital from USA is the most sensitive to corruption. It also shows that capital from Europe is the least responsive to distance, as a factor of explaining FDI. The paper also runs a base mark estimation of what could be expected if corruption levels changed. We can see that if Dominican Republic would have reduced the level of corruption to that of Uruguay, it could have increased the average FDI per year, from 0,8% of GDP to 1,4%. If Argentina, who has a higher FDI over GDP than expected given its level of corruption, would have reduced its level of corruption to the level of Chile, it could have increased the FDI over GDP from 2% to 3,6%. The implications of the results of this paper are that public policies should aim to reduce corruption levels because they have a negative effect on FDI and on the living standard.

Web applications store their data at the server. Despite several benefits, this design raises a serious problem because a bug or misconfiguration causing data loss or corruption can affect a large number of users. We describe the design of a generic recovery system for web applications. Our system tracks application requests and reuses undo logs already kept by databases to selectively recover from corrupting requests and their effects. The main challenge is to correlate requests across the multiple tiers of the application to determine the correct recovery actions. We explore using dependencies both within and across requests at three layers, (i.e., database, application, client) to help identify data corruption accurately. We evaluate our system using known bugs and misconfigurations in popular web applications, including Wordpress, Drupal and Gallery2. Our results show that our system enables recovery from data corruption without loss of critical data incurring little overhead while tracking requests.

This dissertation comprises three essays. The theme that unifies them is "experiments on corruption and preferences." The first essay (chapter 2) reports theory-testing experiments on the effect of yardstick competition (a form of government competition) on corruption. The second essay (chapter 3) reports theory-testing experiments on the effect of efficiency and transparency on corruption. Furthermore, this essay revisits the yardstick competition question by implementing an alternative experimental design and protocol. Finally, the third essay (chapter 4) reports a theory-testing randomized field experiment that identifies the causes and consequences of corruption. The first essay finds the following. Theoretically, the paper derives a main proposition which suggests that institutions with more noise give rise to an increase in corrupt behavior and a decrease in voter welfare. Empirically, the paper finds a few key results. First, there are an initial nontrivial proportion of good incumbents in the population. This proportion goes down as the experiment session progresses. Secondly, a large proportion of bad incumbents make theoretically inconsistent choices given the assumptions of the model. Third, overall evidence of yardstick competition is mild. Yardstick competition has little effect as a corruption-taming mechanism when the proportion of good incumbents is low. Namely, an institution that is characterized by a small number of good incumbents has little room for yardstick competition, since bad incumbents are likely to be replaced by equally bad incumbents. Thus, incumbents have less of an incentive to build a reputation. This is also the case in which (1) yardstick competition leads to non-increasing voter welfare and (2) voters are more likely to re-elect bad domestic incumbents. Finally, a partitioning of the data by gender suggests that males and females exhibit different degrees of learning depending on the payoffs they face. Furthermore, male voter behavior exhibits mild evidence of yardstick competition when voters face the pooling equilibrium payoff. The second essay finds the following. First, efficiency is an important determinant of corruption. A decrease in efficiency makes it more costly for incumbents to "do the right thing." This drives them to divert maximum rents. While voters retaliate slightly, voters tend to be worse off. Secondly, increased lack of a particular form of transparency (as defined in terms of an increase in risk in the distribution of the unit cost) leaves corrupt incumbent behavior unchanged. In particular, if the draw of the unit cost is unfavorable, incumbents tend to be less corrupt. Third, there is strong evidence of yardstick competition. On the incumbent's side, yardstick competition acts as a corruption-taming mechanism if the incumbent is female. On the voter's side, voters are less likely to re-elect the incumbent in the presence of yardstick competition. Specifically, voters pay attention to the difference between the tax signal in their own jurisdiction and that in another. As this difference increases, voters re-elect less. This gives true meaning to the concept of "benchmarking." Finally, the analysis sheds light on the role of history and beliefs on behavior. Beliefs are an important determinant of incumbents' choices. If an incumbent perceives a tax signal to be associated with a higher likelihood of re-election, he is more likely to choose it. On the voter's side, history tends to be important. In particular, voters are more likely to vote out incumbents as time progresses. This suggests that incumbents care about tax signals because they provide access to re-elections while voters use the history of taxes and re-elections in addition to current taxes to formulate their re-election decisions. Finally, the third essay finds the following. First, 19.08% of mail is lost. Secondly, money mail is more likely to be lost at a rate of 20.90% and this finding is significant at the 10% level. This finding suggests that loss of mail is systematic (non-random), which implies that this type of corruption is due to strategic behavior as opposed to plain shirking on the part of mail handlers. Third, we find that loss of mail is non-random across other observables. In particular, middle-income neighborhoods are more likely to experience lost (money) mail. Also, female heads of household in low-income neighborhoods are more likely to experience lost mail while female heads of household in high-income neighborhoods are much less likely to experience lost (money) mail. Finally, this form of corruption is costly to different stakeholders. The sender of mail bears a direct and an indirect cost. The direct cost is the value of the mail. The indirect cost is the cost of having to switch carriers once mail has been lost. Corruption is also costly to the intended mail recipient as discussed above. Finally, corruption is costly the mail company (SERPOST) in terms of lost revenue and to society in terms of loss of trust. Overall, the findings suggest that public-private partnerships need not increase efficiency by reducing corruption; particularly, when the institution remains a monopoly. Increased efficiency in mail delivery is likely to require (1) privatization and (2) competition; otherwise, the monopolist has no incentive to provide better service and loss of mail is likely to persist.

University of Macau / Faculty of Social Sciences and Humanities / Department of Communication