Friday, July 9, 2021 at 14:00-15:30 Vienna time (CEST)

Presenters
Mr. Olivier Basdevant, Senior Economist, Fiscal Affairs Department, International Monetary Fund 
Mr. Mihaly Fazekas, Assistant Professor, Central European University & Scientific Director, Government Transparency Institute  

Moderator
Mrs. Barbara Dutzler, Senior Economist, Joint Vienna Institute

Bad governance and corruption have long been recognized as impediments to growth, peaceful social orders, and good environmental standards at the national level. Corruption is also a global phenomenon. It not only thrives domestically from vulnerabilities in governance system, it can also be transnational. For example, foreign companies can bribe local officials to gain advantages on specific markets, while perpetrators can conceal the proceeds of corrupt acts in foreign countries. International financial institutions, including the IMF, have put good governance and the fight against corruption at the core of their work to promote global economic stability. Nevertheless, the lack of data and actionable indicators have long made it difficult to fight corruption effectively and to monitor results. This has started to change with the increasing availability of large-scale datasets on government activities such as contract-level public procurement datasets.  

The webinar will offer, first, an overview of the IMF’s approach to governance and anti-corruption in country diagnostics; second, it will provide insights into cutting-edge methods of measuring corruption risks in public spending; finally, the webinar will showcase selected applications of new methodologies in policy analysis.