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Summary. Develops the reform implications of influence market/institutional corruption

Summary. This edited volume was the first of its kind in creativity scholarship to include an ethical dimension in the definition of creativity (separating creativity as positive contribution vs. corruption as devolutionary or parasitic contribution), inviting contributions from the few leading scholars who had at least touched on ethics or lack thereof in creativity. In addition to initiating the book, I contributed two solo and 2 co-authored chapters.

Summary. Game theory has allowed the study of the rationality of relationships among actors. This is a strategic relationship where the final outcome depends on the decisions made by each actor. As each player awaits the other player’s decision, the anticipation of the opponent’s move is essential. For game analysis, it is important to view such anticipation as a combination of expectations. When it comes to a negotiation game, the various rules of the game, the means that condition players’ moves and the projection of goals are also important. Likewise, corruption can be also analyzed as an agreement that is reached after a process of negotiation between actors. The objective of this paper is, therefore, to interpret Schelling’s negotiation games as adapted to the problem of corruption.

Summary. This commentary raises the concern that efforts to ensure that industry is “at the table” for the WHO/FAO’s Second International Conference on Nutrition allow industry to influence the agenda, as well as the ways in which global health challenges are framed and addressed.

Summary. This essay explores how oil and gas companies exploit secret settlements with families harmed by fracking in order to suppress evidence of the harmful effects of their commercial practices.

Summary. This article outlines the systemic ethical implications of public-private partnerships with the food and soda industry—including research agenda distortion and framing effects (such as the characterization of obesity primarily as a problem of individual behavior, and the minimization or neglect of food systems and the role of powerful corporate actors in those systems).

Summary. This chapter included discussion of the Wikipedia study within the context of formulating a more comprehensive theory of "ethics of possibility" in which individuals think about the ethical implications of novel contributions while they are contributing to them--and to possibly anticipate some of them--rather than succumbing to "optimism bias" or "confirmation bias" (thinking that "everything I do will go as I plan or want it to, and my brilliant idea has no downsides" or, perhaps worse, launching the product/service without an ethical thought and waiting for the market/civitas/community to figure out the implications.

Summary. This paper most specifically draws from the the conceptual frames developed in the IC Safra Lab - although their explicit reference to it varies. The risk of IC to public credibility of scientific and scholarly institutions stands at the focus of this work, especially the paradox of the pursuit of value-free science as a value-laden approach to defend this credibility without accountability.

Summary. The law has long been concerned with the agency problems that arise when advisors, such as attorneys or physicians, put themselves in financial relationships that create conflicts of interest. If the financial relationship is "material" to the transactions proposed by the advisor, then non-disclosure of the relationship may be pertinent to claims of malpractice, informed consent, and even fraud, as well as to professional discipline. In these sorts of cases, materiality is closely related to the question of causation, roughly turning on whether the withheld information might have changed the decision of a reasonable advisee (i.e., a patient). The injured plaintiff will predictably testify that the information would have impacted his or her choice, but that self-serving testimony may be unreliable. The fact finder is left to speculate about the counterfactual world in which the information was disclosed. This Article shows how randomized vignette-based experimentation may create a valuable form of evidence to address these questions, for both litigation and policymaking. To demonstrate this method and investigate conflicts of interest in healthcare in particular, we recruited 691 human subjects and asked them to imagine themselves as patients facing a choice about whether to undergo a cardiac stenting procedure recommended by a cardiologist. We manipulated the vignettes in a 2 x 3 between-subjects design, where we systematically varied the appropriateness of the proposed treatment, which was described in terms of patient risk without the procedure (low or high), and manipulated the type of disclosure provided by the physician (none, standard, or enhanced). We used physician ownership of the specialty hospital where the surgery would be performed as the conflict of interest, disclosed or not, and the "enhanced" disclosure included notice that such relationships have been associated with biases in prescribing behavior. We found that the mock patients were significantly less likely to follow the cardiologist's recommendation of surgical implantation of a drug-eluting stent when he disclosed a financial conflict of interest, regardless of whether the disclosure was standard or enhanced. We also found that the mock patients were more likely to choose the treatment when they faced greater risk without it. We did not, however, find that the disclosure made patients more discerning about the appropriateness of the procedure. We discuss the implications for law and policy. Mock patients seem likely to act upon such information, declining the low-value healthcare when conflicts are disclosed. This finding suggests that the information is material to such transactions, and that disclosures may be salutary for medical decisions. Arguably, therefore, physicians already have a duty under the common law to disclose the financial relationships they choose to accept. Other regulators and policymakers should recognize and clarify this duty, and courts should embrace this form of evidence. Methodologically, although this empirical approach has limits, it reduces speculation by fact finders and policymakers, by at least focusing their attention on the right questions.

Summary. An analysis of corruption and misappropriation in World Bank projects using original data. When World Bank projects are targeted at a more specific constituency, there are fewer problems with corruption.

Summary. Education today is a high-stake sector and increasingly vulnerable to corruption. Yet, despite all efforts there is still no certainty on how to best protect it from “harm”. The problem is partially due to a lack of consensus on what constitutes malpractice in education. The article argues in favor of mobilizing new insights from education research and anti-corruption policy for the development of sector standards of integral behavior. It discusses a systemic, service based approach around which this could be done and the responsibility of education practitioners and policy makers in the endeavor. It also suggests that measures to prevent corruption in education should be more sector-specific and target not only criminal offenses, but also “softer”, yet equally harmful forms of malpractice.

Summary. By arranging the types of relational corruption most frequently found in Latin American countries from a rational agent perspective, it is possible to identify the corrupt practices that cause considerable damage to institutions as well as to society.

Summary. Weak public procurement processes in some Latin American countries are undermined in order to fund party politics. This situation presents new methodologies of, and a wide scope for, institutional corruption because it involves, among other things, the creation of ad hoc corporations to establish corrupt relationships with the government.