Pork-Barrel Politics in Postwar Italy, 1953–94

This article analyzes the political determinants of the distribution of infrastructure expenditures by the Italian government to the country's 92 provinces between 1953 and 1994. Extending implications of theories of legislative behavior to the context of open-list proportional representation, we examine whether individually powerful legislators and ruling parties direct spending to core or marginal electoral districts and whether opposition parties share resources via a norm of universalism. We show that when districts elect politically more powerful deputies from the governing parties, they receive more investments. We interpret this as indicating that legislators with political resources reward their core voters by investing in public works in their districts. The governing parties, by contrast, are not able to discipline their own members of parliament sufficiently to target the parties' areas of core electoral strength. Finally, we find no evidence that a norm of universalism operates to steer resources to areas when the main opposition party gains more votes.     

Trends in Corruptions Around the World

The problem of measuring changes in corruption internationally is significantly more daunting than that of estimating their levels. We compute trends in corruption for groups of geographically proximate countries, based on the geographic distribution of cases of cross-border bribes, and confirm that geographic variations in corruption are greater than time variations. They are then compared with changes in perceived corruption, as measured by Transparency International’s Corruption Perception Index. We find that these alternative measures are not significantly correlated with each other. Using a panel data estimation technique, we attempt to explain trends in corruption. We only partially confirm results that are obtained when the purpose is to account for their levels in the context of a cross-sectional study. Overall, we conclude that the study of changes in levels of corruption is still in its infancy.     

Incumbency Effects under Proportional Representation: Leaders and Backbenchers in the Postwar Italian Chamber of Deputies

We study incumbency effects for individual legislators from two political parties (Christian Democracy and the Italian Socialist Party) in Italy's lower house of representatives over 10 legislatures (1948–92) elected using open‐list proportional representation. Our analysis finds no reelection advantage for the average incumbent legislator. Only a tiny elite in each party successfully creates an incumbency advantage. We find incumbents advantaged for reselection by their political party. We interpret reselection advantage as a party loyalty premium. Our study depicts a political environment monopolized by party leaders who reward party loyalty but hamper legislators in appealing directly to voters.     

The determinants of cross-border corruption

Public Choice - We reconsider the question of what determines corruption at the cross-national level, using new methods and data: observations of occurrences of cross-national...     

The Supply-Side of International Corruption: a New Measure and a Critique

I consider the supply-side of corruption in the context of international bribery, which I define as firms bribing public officials abroad. I present the Bribe Payers Corruption Index (BPCI), a non-perception-based measure of cross-border corruption coherent with a simple analytical framework based on an important distinction: that between the propensities to corrupt and observed levels of corruption. The BPCI is compared with a widely known indicator of the supply-side of corruption, Transparency International’s Bribe Payers Index (TI-BPI), which I demonstrate to be flawed. Whereas according to the TI-BPI firms from corrupt countries are more likely to bribe abroad, the opposite emerges when the BPCI is considered. I explain and discuss such results, the implications of which are framed within the global discourse on the supply-side of international corruption.