Anti-Corruption Strategies in Foreign Aid: From Controls to Results

Corruption is an obstacle to social and economic progress in developing countries yet we still know very little about the effectiveness of anti-corruption efforts and their impact on development impact. This essay looks at 25 years of efforts by foreign aid agencies to combat corruption and proposes a new strategy which could leverage existing approaches by directly incorporating information on development results. With better results data, funders would be able to (1) prioritize investigative resources, (2) test control strategies, (3) implement pay for results and (4) be selective with objective criteria.