 Governments manipulate official Statistics: Institutions matterAndre Briviba, Bruno Frey, Louis Moser and Sandro Bieri European Journal of Political Economy, 2024, vol. 82, issue C Abstract: Many governments have been reported to systematically manipulate official statistics. However, scholarly research has not extensively dealt with the determinants of data manipulation, beyond the effect of autocracy. We extend the literature by including institutional factors hypothetically affecting data manipulation. Regressing the gap between GDP – predicted by night-time lighting data – and „official“ GDP on these institutional factors suggests that economic openness and democracy decrease manipulation, while decentralization increases manipulation. Political openness decreases manipulation for countries under-reporting GDP and increases manipulation for countries over-reporting GDP. Surprisingly, no effects are found for press freedom and the independence of the statistical office. Keywords: Data manipulation; Official statistics; Political economy; Government; Institutions (search for similar items in EconPapers) Downloads: (external link) Related works: Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:eee:poleco:v:82:y:2024:i:c:s0176268024000259 DOI: 10.1016/j.ejpoleco.2024.102523 Access Statistics for this article European Journal of Political Economy is currently edited by J. De Haan, A. L. Hillman and H. W. Ursprung More articles in European Journal of Political Economy from Elsevier |
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