A recurrent theme of this blog has been how clever empirical analysis can be used to recover causal effects in observational data. Such statistical tools are important because, in many cases, individuals or regions cannot be randomly assigned to various states that we are interested. At the same time, however, the use of field experiments, both to assess causal effects and to test various theories, is becoming more prevalent in economics, political science and public health. In an earlier post, I talked about the Jameel Poverty Action Lab, a group set up by economists primarily based at MIT and Harvard which uses experiments to test out different local development interventions.
Another benefit of the experimental method is that it allows one to quantify things that are very hard to measure in even the most detailed surveys. This doesn't just include behavioral concepts such as individual preferences, risk aversion, or discount rates, but also phenomenon like corruption, where survey respondents may be loath to reveal their true history of actions due to fears of legal ramification.
Experiments looking at corruption are slowly growing in number. Just recently, I read a paper (no links available) by two Yale political science graduate students looking at the effects of the Indian Right to Information act versus corrupt practices versus the by-the-books apply and wait method in helping slum dwellers in New Delhi receive government ration cards, which serves as a form of ID as well as a means for accessing fair price food shops. In order to get a ration card, individuals have to fill out an application and prove that they meet a particular means test (i.e., their income must be below some threshold). The authors found that nothing greased the wheels quite like corruption, but the Right to Information request did allow individuals to get their ration cards reasonably quickly. Not a single member of the control group, who merely filled out an application for the car, received a ration card even some 7 months after the experiment began.
This experiment is similar in spirit to one recently published in the Quarterly Journal of Economics, which considers the influence of corruption in obtaining a driver's license in India. From the abstract:
We study the allocation of driver's licenses in India by randomly assigning applicants to one of three groups: bonus (offered a bonus for obtaining a license quickly), lesson (offered free driving lessons), or comparison. Both the bonus and lesson groups are more likely to obtain licenses. However, bonus group members are more likely to make extralegal payments and to obtain licenses without knowing how to drive. All extralegal payments happen through private intermediaries ("agents"). An audit study of agents reveals that they can circumvent procedures such as the driving test. Overall, our results support the view that corruption does not merely reflect transfers from citizens to bureaucrats but distorts allocation.
Some self-promotion: Paul Lagunes, Brian Fried (both of Yale political science) and yours truly recently conducted an experiment in a large Latin American city. The idea was to explore the intersection between corruption and inequality: do public officials behave more corruptly with upper class or lower class individuals? Our experiment involved traffic police and driving infractions, and we found that, conditional on being stopped, lower class individuals were much more likely to be asked to pay a bribe than upper class drivers, who were typically merely warned not to drive in that fashion in the future. Interestingly, not a single traffic ticket was given out during the duration of our experiment!
To help interpret the differential class results, we interviewed police officers in the city to get a sense of what might be driving differential treatments. Based on these interviews, our hypothesis is that upper class drivers were treated differently because of the cops' fear that the former's bureaucratic influence could get them in trouble with their supervisors.
We hope to have a draft of our paper out to a political science or criminology journal soon. I'll keep you posted.
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