Fighting for economic development -- Suharto, Inc -- The smuggling gap -- Nature or nurture? : understanding the culture of corruption -- No water, no peace -- Death by a thousand small cuts -- The road back from war -- Learning to fight economic gangsters -- Epilogue : doing better this time

Corruption is believed to be a major factor impeding economic development, but the importance of legal enforcement versus cultural norms in controlling corruption is poorly understood. To disentangle these two factors, we exploit a natural experiment, the stationing of thousands of diplomats...

Meet the economic gangster. He's the United Nations diplomat who double-parks his Mercedes on New York City streets at rush hour because the cops can't touch him--he has diplomatic immunity. He's the Chinese smuggler who dodges tariffs by magically transforming frozen chickens into frozen...