Social Monitoring and Corruption in Developing Countries Public Deposited
- Last Modified
- March 20, 2019
- Creator
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Gonzalez, Robert
- Affiliation: College of Arts and Sciences, Department of Economics
- Abstract
- This dissertation studies the impact of social monitoring--monitoring of government officials by ordinary citizens--on institutional corruption. Specifically, I study a monitoring initiative in which citizens used cell phones to report instances of fraud during the 2009 Afghan presidential election. Since implementation of the program required cell phone coverage, I combine coverage maps with unique data on the geographic location and fraud levels of polling centers across Afghanistan to determine: (i) the effect of coverage on fraud, and (ii) whether social monitoring is the main corruption-deterring mechanism among several competing channels. Using a spatial regression discontinuity (RD) design along the cell phone coverage boundary, I find considerable evidence that cell phone-based participation deters corrupt behavior. Polling centers inside cell phone coverage areas report up to a 26 percent drop in the share of fraudulent votes relative to centers outside. Analyses of the effect of coverage on election-related violence and the tribal composition of villages suggest that the observed declines in fraud cannot be attributed to these alternative channels. From a policy perspective, these results illustrate how a widespread technology, namely cell phones, can exert a positive externality on institutional development via corruption deterrence.
- Date of publication
- May 2016
- Keyword
- DOI
- Resource type
- Rights statement
- In Copyright
- Advisor
- Pires, Tiago
- Peter, Klara
- Conway, Patrick J.
- Field, Erica
- Guilkey, David
- Degree
- Doctor of Philosophy
- Degree granting institution
- University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill Graduate School
- Graduation year
- 2016
- Language
- Parents:
This work has no parents.
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