APC presents Corruption Study at the University of Virginia Quantitative Collaborative

In Photo: (Top to Bottom)  Daniel Bruno Davis, PhD Candidate at the University of Virginia Department of Politics and Non-Resident Research Fellow at the Ateneo Policy Center; Dr. Daniel Gingerich, Associate Professor of Politics at the University of Virginia and Director of the Quantitative Collaborative; Jurel Yap, Statistician and Research Associate at the Ateneo Policy Center; Dr. Thomas Guterbock, Founding Director of the UVA Center for Survey Research and Professor of Sociology at the University of Virginia; Dr. Leonard Schoppa, Professor of Politics at the University of Virginia


The Ateneo School of Government (ASOG), through the Ateneo Policy Center (APC), presented their study entitled ‘Corruption risk and political dynasties: Exploring the links using public procurement data in the Philippines’. Highly distinguished professors from the University of Virginia’s Quantitative Collaborative group attended the talk held via Zoom.

In the talk, Mr. Jurel Yap, APC Statistician and Research Associate, and Mr. Daniel Bruno Davis, APC Non-Resident Research Fellow, presented their study on behalf of Dean Ronald U. Mendoza, PhD, who is their co-author.

The paper proposed a unique corruption risk index, which was constructed from millions of rows of PHILGEPS public procurement data. This indicator was used then in a regression model to determine that a particular measure of political power concentration among clans—a Hirschman-Herfindahl Index applied to the political sphere-- is significantly and positively linked to the corruption risk indicator

The open forum, moderated by Professor Daniel Gingerich, prompted a discussion on a variety of topics raised by the Quantitative Collaborative. The presenters answered questions  from the nature of dynastic politics in the Philippines to the characteristics and construction of the corruption risk index and measures of political dynasties.