Curated examples of papers, journalism, policy reports, and theses that draw on the Subnational Corruption Database. If you have used the SCD in your work and want it featured here, please get in touch.
The SCD is now cited in the IMF's flagship World Economic Outlook and in peer-reviewed work in Organization Science, the Journal of Corporate Finance, and Sustainable Development. A small selection below.
The IMF's flagship World Economic Outlook draws on the SCD as a sub-national governance variable in its Chapter 3 analysis of conflict, governance, and development outcomes - alongside satellite nightlight data and fragility indicators. The use of the SCD by the IMF marks the index's entry into top-tier multilateral economic analysis.
Uses the SCD to separate grand from petty corruption when explaining where Bitcoin DAOs and crowdfunding platforms emerge, finding that the two dimensions have distinct effects on platform founding. Published in INFORMS' flagship management journal.
Uses sub-national SCD scores for German regions, alongside Statistisches Bundesamt indicators, to study how decades of communism still shape investor behaviour on the equity-crowdfunding platform Companisto.
A methodological evaluation of corruption surveys that highlights the SCD as a leading example of output harmonization - "systematically harmonizes survey-based corruption indicators across 1,473 sub-national regions and 807 surveys worldwide."
Exploits the SCD's decomposition of grand vs. petty corruption to show that "electoral corruption cycles" look very different through perception vs. experience lenses across 45 democracies.
Reviews Philippine anti-corruption efforts and uses the SCD's grand/petty disaggregation as part of a typology of corruption forms that should be tackled separately by policy.
Methodological paper proposing a three-dimensional approach to corruption measurement, situating the SCD within the evolving landscape of corruption indicators.
Cross-country empirical analysis of how different dimensions of economic freedom affect corruption, drawing on the SCD as one of several alternative corruption measures for robustness.
Lab-in-the-field experiment that situates Slovakia's public-service honesty within sub-national corruption variation drawn from the SCD.
Uses the SCD's Egyptian sub-national series alongside provincial output data to revisit the "Arab inequality puzzle".
Analyses Indian state-level fiscal decentralization and human-development outcomes using the SCD's sub-national governance scores as control variables.
Eleven Central and Eastern European transition economies are analysed for the link between non-tax revenues, public spending, and corruption, drawing on the SCD as an alternative corruption measure.
Uses the SCD to measure sub-national corruption ("the abuse of entrusted power for private gain... measured on a 0-100 scale") in a study of how foreign aid interacts with local governance to predict targeted violence.
Aid has different electoral effects in low- vs. high-corruption sub-national environments - identification rests on the SCD's sub-national variation across African regions.
Combines a registry of 9,472 critical mineral mines with the SCD to show that the negative environmental impacts of mining concentrate in the worst-governed sub-national regions ("equivalent to the worst-governed regions of the Democratic Republic of Congo").
Tests whether local mining firms have a comparative advantage over multinationals in weak-institution environments - identification leans on the SCD's sub-national governance scores.
Surveys legislators and citizens about corruption beliefs in three countries; the SCD provides external benchmarks of objective sub-national corruption levels.
Builds a fiscal-rule index for Swiss cantons; the SCD provides one of the cross-cantonal governance baselines.
Tests whether temperature extremes amplify income inequality at the sub-national level in SSA - corruption controls drawn from the SCD.
Survey of lawyers in the judicial district of Moquegua, Peru, on the effectiveness of the penal system against corruption - uses the SCD as international benchmark.