Corruption Chapter Full 17

Corruption is rampant in many poor countries. As such, anti-corruption policies continue to be a central component of development strategies. For example, since 1996, the World Bank alone has supported more than 600 anti-corruption programs. Unfortunately, this is one area where research has lagged policy. Research on corruption faces two important obstacles—one empirical and one theoretical. On the empirical side, the primary challenge is measurement. Corruption, by its very nature, is illicit and secretive. How does one study something that is defined in part by the fact that individuals go to great lengths to hide it? How does one deal with the fact that attempts to measure corruption may cause the actors involved to either reduce their illicit behaviors during the periods of measurement or find new ways to obscure their behavior? If we cannot accurately measure corruption, how can we test among different theories, measure its impacts, or even produce suggestive correlations? In recent years, some progress has been made to deal with these challenges. In particular, while the previous generation of corruption measures were mainly