The Corrupt Institutions of Development Economics and Its Shadow Professoriate

Abstract

A shadow professoriate influences an increasing amount of development economics activity. Badly conceived hiring, pay, and promotion rules, as well as the money-seeking politics institutionalizing these rules, allow self-interested development economists to use its services and join its ranks. My essay uses tools from institutional economics to understand corruption and from the institutional corruption literature to assess the impacts of this shadow professorate on the economic development discipline. The literature points to a 7-part test useful for identifying such corrupt research. Easily over 30,000 pseudepigraphical ghostwriters, predatory journal editors and unqualified development workers each year pen articles which academics and development workers can rely on less and less -- distorting the development economics discipline. They create new markets for paper mills in developing countries generating over $1 billion in wages each year, and oil career ladders for over 15,000 academics, government officials and development workers. They also divert at least $16 billion resources from formal academic and development institutions and agents resulting in damages easily exceeding $200 billion and probably more.

Keywords: Contract cheating, corruption, development economics, economist capture, fake degrees, institutional corruption, motivated reasoning, paper mills, predatory journals, shadow scholars, state capture

JEL Classification: A11, D02, D73, I25, J46, O21