“Publish More as Corruption Perishes: Scientific Research and Anticorruption Campaigns” (with Zhongyang He) (manuscript)

Abstract: Academic corruption is a challenge to the global scientific community, but when governments launch anticorruption programs, little do we understand how they impact the research activities. We argue that anticorruption programs redistribute research resources from universities directly hit by the program to those that are not, and the program also redistributes in favor of under-funded researchers who are marginally more efficient. Hence, anticorruption programs can boost total research output, especially in universities not directly hit by the program. However, anticorruption programs also have a chilling effect to increase scientists’ perceived compliance risk and reduce their research activities. Together, schools only indirectly affected by anticorruption programs should have an increase in productivity. We draw evidence from more than one hundred top universities in China and Xi Jinping’s sweeping anticorruption campaign in the party-state between 2012 and 2017. Using a difference-in-differences approach, we find a 10.5% increase in a university’s paper publication after inspection teams arrived at its neighbor universities. Our findings imply that the advancement of science benefits from a higher standard of research integrity and governments’ programs to cleanse corruption on campus.

Presented at MPSA 2022.

University Inspection Progress: 2013–2018

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