GSA employees joke about all the government waste that they oversee
Posted: April 7, 2012 Filed under: Corruption, Uncategorized Leave a comment »Sent to you via Google Reader
GSA employees joke about all the government waste that they oversee
Half of Obama biggest fundraisers get jobs in administration
Posted: March 9, 2012 Filed under: Corruption, Obama, Revolving Door, Uncategorized Leave a comment »Sent to you via Google Reader
Half of Obama biggest fundraisers get jobs in administration
John F Kennedy bought 1,200 Cuban cigars hours before he ordered US trade embargo | Mail Online
Posted: February 8, 2012 Filed under: Corruption, Uncategorized Leave a comment »
How Bad is Corruption? Cross-country Evidence of the Impact of Corruption on Economic Prosperity
Posted: January 16, 2012 Filed under: Corruption Leave a comment »http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/j.1467-9361.2011.00653.x/abstract
Proposed FOIA Update: Government Should Be Allowed to Pretend Records Don’t Exist
Posted: October 26, 2011 Filed under: Corruption, Transparency, Uncategorized Leave a comment »Sent to you via Google Reader
Proposed FOIA Update: Government Should Be Allowed to Pretend Records Don’t Exist
Exploring the Links Between Corruption and Growth
Posted: July 22, 2011 Filed under: Corruption Leave a comment »http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/j.1467-9361.2011.00621.x/abstract
Stimulus Dollars Intended to Lower Utility Bills for the Disabled Go to Lawyers, Lobbyists
Posted: July 8, 2011 Filed under: Corruption, Stimulus, Uncategorized Leave a comment »Sent to you via Google Reader
Stimulus Dollars Intended to Lower Utility Bills for the Disabled Go to Lawyers, Lobbyists
Electoral Accountability and Corruption: Evidence from the Audits of Local Governments
Posted: June 29, 2011 Filed under: Corruption Leave a comment »http://www.aeaweb.org/articles.php?doi=10.1257/aer.101.4.1274
Donors to Obama got big government contracts through Stimulus
Posted: June 16, 2011 Filed under: Corruption, Politics, Stimulus, Uncategorized Leave a comment »Sent to you via Google Reader
Donors to Obama got big government contracts through Stimulus
Abnormal Returns From the Common Stock Investments of Members of the U.S. House of Representatives
Posted: May 23, 2011 Filed under: Corruption Leave a comment »http://www.bepress.com/bap/vol13/iss1/art4/?sending=11417
Corruption is bad for growth (even in the United States)
Posted: May 4, 2011 Filed under: Corruption Leave a comment »http://www.springerlink.com/content/6p74nu14860u8w30/
Health Programs Rank High on List of Improper Payments
Posted: February 26, 2011 Filed under: Corruption, Health Care, Uncategorized 2 Comments »Sent to you via Google Reader
Health Programs Rank High on List of Improper Payments
Inspector: Millions in improper Katrina, Rita aid not yet recovered
Posted: January 3, 2011 Filed under: Corruption, Hurricane Katrina Leave a comment »http://www.cnn.com/2011/US/01/03/fema.payments/
Economic growth with endogenous corruption: an empirical study
Posted: December 11, 2010 Filed under: Corruption Leave a comment »http://www.springerlink.com/content/0251327436872551/
Insider Trading is Legal for Congressional Insiders
Posted: October 19, 2010 Filed under: Corruption, Insider Trading, Uncategorized Leave a comment »Sent to you via Google Reader
Insider Trading is Legal for Congressional Insiders
The corruption of economics: Larry Summers: neo-Keynesian aristocrat | The Economist
Posted: October 14, 2010 Filed under: Corruption, Keynesian Economics, Methodology, Uncategorized Leave a comment »http://www.economist.com/blogs/democracyinamerica/2010/10/corruption_economics
Insider Trading on Capitol Hill
Posted: October 11, 2010 Filed under: Corruption, Insider Trading, Uncategorized Leave a comment »Sent to you via Google Reader
Insider Trading on Capitol Hill
This Bud’s Not for You
Posted: September 26, 2010 Filed under: Corruption, Drugs, Lobbying, Uncategorized Leave a comment »Sent to you via Google Reader
This Bud’s Not for You
(Jonathan H. Adler)
The California Beer and Beverage Distributors is opposing a California ballot proposition that would legalize marijuana within the state. No surprise there. Some of the CBBD’s members may fear legal marijuana would compete with beer. Interestingly, the CBBD claims it is not opposed to legalization in principle, just the poor wording of this specific proposal. Josh Wright doesn’t buy it. Neither should you.
Daniel J. SmithSent Via Mobile Phone
http://www.danieljosephsmith.com
Bribery and inspection technology
Posted: September 20, 2010 Filed under: Corruption Leave a comment »http://www.springerlink.com/content/j6068855523r7642/
The e-government movement advocates increased use of technology to improve government efficiency and reduce corruption by reducing the discretionary power of government officials. This paper studies the relationship between improvements in inspection technology within a Principal-Supervisor-Agent model, where the supervisor is an inspector who is hired by the principal to investigate the agent’s potentially illegal actions. We show that when technology increases the marginal or total productivity of the supervisor’s effort, improvements in inspection technology encourage some types of bribery. Although such technological improvements induce an equilibrium with bribery, compliance and social welfare can still rise. However, when technology and supervisory effort are sufficiently substitutable, improvements in technology may reduce compliance when bribery occurs in equilibrium even when those same technological improvements would have raised compliance in the absence of bribery. We also characterize the relationship between the principal’s socially optimal technology and the anti-corruption policy available to the principal and find that the socially optimal inspection technology may be a substitute for or a complement to the anti-corruption policy. Finally, we show that for any set of policies that optimally induces a no-bribe equilibrium, there exists another set of policies that induces an equilibrium with bribery that is pareto superior to it.
Media activity and public spending
Posted: September 20, 2010 Filed under: Corruption, Democracy, Politics, Voting Leave a comment »http://www.springerlink.com/content/h39235362l040156/
Politicians seeking reelection need voters to know what they have done for them. Thus, incentives may arise to spend more money where media coverage is higher. We present a simple model to explain the allocation of public spending across jurisdictions contingent on media activity. A politician seeking to maximize the probability of reelection will shift more money to jurisdictions where an extra dollar raises more votes because a larger share of the electorate is informed about his policy. The main prediction of the model is that media activity is higher in the core areas of media markets. This implies higher spending levels there and lower spending levels in remote jurisdictions. Empirical support for this prediction is found using United States data on county-level federal grant allocation, Designated Market Areas and the location of licensed television stations.
Watchman, Who Watches Thee? Donors and Corruption in Less-Developed Countries: The Independent Review: The Independent Institute
Posted: April 27, 2010 Filed under: Corruption, Development Economics, Uncategorized Leave a comment »http://www.independent.org/publications/tir/article.asp?a=563
Daniel J. Smith
Sent Via Mobile Phone
http://www.danieljosephsmith.com
With Friends Like These, Who Needs Enemies? Aiding the World’s Worst Dictators: The Independent Review: The Independent Institute
Posted: April 27, 2010 Filed under: Corruption, Foreign Aid, Uncategorized Leave a comment »http://www.independent.org/publications/tir/article.asp?a=739
Daniel J. Smith
Sent Via Mobile Phone
http://www.danieljosephsmith.com
Strange Laws
Posted: April 14, 2010 Filed under: Corruption, Government, Iraq, Law, Police, War Leave a comment »http://www.overcomingbias.com/2010/04/strange-law.html
POLITICAL INFLUENCE AND THE INTERNAL REVENUE SERVICE
Posted: April 7, 2010 Filed under: Corruption, Politics, Taxes Leave a comment »http://www.cato.org/pubs/journal/cj19n2/cj19n2-8.pdf
Corruption and Growth
Posted: April 7, 2010 Filed under: Corruption, Development Economics Leave a comment »http://www.cato.org/pubs/journal/cj27n3/cj27n3-3.pdf
http://www.cato.org/pubs/journal/cj27n3/cj27n3-2.pdf
Revenue Estimates from Tanning Tax are Half-Baked
Posted: April 6, 2010 Filed under: CBO, Corruption, Health Care, Health Insurance, Uncategorized Leave a comment »Sent to you via Google Reader
Revenue Estimates from Tanning Tax are Half-Baked
Ten Rules for Dealing with Police
Posted: March 31, 2010 Filed under: Corruption, Police, Uncategorized Leave a comment »Sent to you via Google Reader
Ten Rules for Dealing with Police
Outstanding new film, premiered at the Cato Institute last week. Watch it here. Lots of useful advice for law-abiding citizens about how to properly exercise their rights to refuse searches that are not based on warrants or probable cause, and other efforts to trick citizens into waiving their rights.
http://www.cato.org/events/100212screening.html
EPA Testing
Posted: March 30, 2010 Filed under: Consumer Safety, Corruption, EPA Leave a comment »“ But this week the Government Accountability Office reported on its test of the EPA’s testing.
GAO obtained Energy Star certifications for 15 bogus products, including a gas-powered alarm clock.
Even worse: The GAO attached a feather duster to a space heater, sent the photo to the EPA, and got approval in just 11 days.”
“I can’t wait until they tell me which heart drug to take”
http://stossel.blogs.foxbusiness.com/2010/03/27/brilliant-government-testing/#ixzz0jfLDEExC
Do Powerful Politicians Cause Corporate Downsizing? — by Lauren Cohen, Joshua D. Coval, Christopher Malloy
Posted: March 29, 2010 Filed under: Corporatism, Corruption, Democracy, Economic Distortion, Politics, Uncategorized Leave a comment »Sent to you via Google Reader
Do Powerful Politicians Cause Corporate Downsizing? — by Lauren Cohen, Joshua D. Coval, Christopher Malloy
This paper employs a new empirical approach for identifying the impact of government spending on the private sector. Our key innovation is to use changes in congressional committee chairmanship as a source of exogenous variation in state-level federal expenditures. In doing so, we show that fiscal spending shocks appear to significantly dampen corporate sector investment and employment activity. These corporate reactions follow both Senate and House committee chair changes, are present among large and small firms and within large and small states, are partially reversed when the congressman resigns, and are most pronounced among geographically-concentrated firms. The effects are economically meaningful and the mechanism – entirely distinct from the more traditional interest rate and tax channels – suggests new considerations in assessing the impact of government spending on private sector economic activity.
Daniel J. SmithSent Via Mobile Phone
