Murrell, PeterKraay, Aart2016-03-112016-03-112016Review of Economics and Statisticshttps://hdl.handle.net/10986/23941Corruption estimates rely largely on self-reports of affected individuals and officials. Yet, survey respondents are often reticent to tell the truth about sensitive subjects, leading to downward biases in survey-based corruption estimates. This paper develops a method to estimate the prevalence of reticent behavior and reticence-adjusted rates of corruption using survey responses to sensitive questions. A statistical model captures how respondents answer a combination of conventional and random-response questions, allowing identification of the effect of reticence. GMM and maximum-likelihood estimates are obtained for ten countries. Adjusting for reticence dramatically alters the perceptions of the extent of corruption.en-USCC BY-NC-ND 3.0 IGOcorruptionreticencerandomized response techniqueJournal ArticleWorld Bank10.1162/REST_a_00536