Date: 26 September 2025, 09:50-11:20 

Location: Corvinus University of Budapest, building C, C.315 

Language of the event: English 

The presentation examines the relationship between corruption and economic data manipulation in post-Communist countries, where official GDP statistics may be vulnerable to strategic misreporting. To address this issue, satellite-captured nighttime light data from 1996 to 2020 is used as an objective proxy for economic activity. The fixed-effects panel analysis shows that corruption not only hinders growth—supporting the “sand-the-wheels” hypothesis—but also contributes to a significant overstatement in reported numbers. A one standard deviation increase in controlling corruption reduces the gap between the two measures by 32% on average, indicating that as corruption decreases, the reported and observed activity become more aligned. These effects are especially pronounced in non-EU post-Communist countries; in contrast, EU member states show little evidence of such distortion. These findings highlight the role of institutional development in reducing both corruption and data manipulation and illustrate the value of satellite data for assessing growth in low-transparency environments. 
 
The seminar is co-organized by CIAS. 
 
No registration needed; all university citizens are welcome.