Lucio Picci
Professor of economics
Department of Economics, University of Bologna.
Piazza Scaravilli 2, I-40126 Bologna
Curriculum Vitae -- Google Scholar personal page -- Amazon's Author Page
Personal links: A blog---My trails---My books---Oldies goldies (old stuff, mostly for friends).
Teaching (past): Applied econometrics, Media Economics
Istruzioni ai miei tesisti (in Italian).
Reasons Behind the Failure of Anti-Corruption Efforts
Cambridge University Press, 2024.
Recipient of the 2025 International Public Policy Association Book Award. From the motivations: "Original, well-structured, well-written."
Some reviews:
"An essential contribution," "one of the most insightful and honest books on the topic to come out in years" (Luciano Da Ros)
"Subtle and wide-ranging," "insightful and important" (Susan Rose-Ackerman)
"Thought-provoking … provocative … Recommended" J. Albanese
In the news
English: An interview (University of Sussex). Jan. 26, 2021. Does more wealth mean less political corruption?, by Daniel Treisman, May 6 2016, The Washington Post.
Spanish: La ambigüedad de la corrupción legal, Jan. 7 2021, UN Periódico Digital, Colombia (also published in El Tiempo. Medir la Corrupción: charla en la Universidad Nacional de Colombia, Bogotá, y conclusiones; 30 octubre 2017.
Italian: Intervista (Rai Storia, February 6, 2021; in Italian); Gli scandali e le regole da cambiare, di Gian Antonio Stella, Il Corriere della Sera, 16 giugno 2018. Gli scandali e le regole da cambiare, di Gian Antonio Stella, Il Corriere della Sera, 16 giugno 2018. Governance & Design. Designing Civic Consciousness, Università di San Marino, 30 maggio 2018. Corruzione in Italia: quanto costa non essere la Germania? 585 miliardi l'anno (più o meno). Citato in: Così la corruzione «brucia» il reddito, di Claudio Gatti. Il Sole 24 Ore, 28 gennaio 2016, e riassunto in E se in Italia ci fosse la stessa corruzione che c’è in Germania?, Il Post, 29 gennaio 2016.
The ethics of scientific research I occasionally give lectures on this important and complicated theme. Here are some:
University of Bologna: Plagiarism, falsification and fabrication of scientific results. The ethics of scientific research, the foundations of our work. (in Italian: L'etica della ricerca, il fondamento del nostro lavoro). PhD Programme, Department of Economics. University of Bologna (in Italian). 20 gennaio 2021.
University Ca' Foscari, Venezia: Lectio magistralis: "Plagio, falsificazione e invenzione dei risultati. L’etica della ricerca, le fondamenta del nostro lavoro." , in occasione della Cerimonia per 107 nuovi dottori di ricerca. Università Ca' Foscari di Venezia. 18 maggio 2018. Registrazione video (da 32'30'')
Working papers
Unpacking compliance and "leakages" in international regimes : the case of the OECD anti-bribery convention . With Lorenzo Crippa and Edmund J. Malesky.
Making Bribery Profitable Again? The Market Effects of Halting Extraterritorial Accountability for Overseas Bribery . With Lorenzo Crippa and Edmund J. Malesky.
Narratives of institutional change (my musings on, well, see the title).
Corruption in the Liminal Time. Enduring Questions and Theory. In The Handbook of Research Methods for Corruption Studies, edited by Michael Johnston. Cheltenham: Edward Elgar (forthcoming).
Publications
"Rethinking Corruption. Reasons Behind the Failure of Anti-Corruption Efforts." Cambridge University Press, 2024. p. 270.
"Measurement of corruption" (with Laarni Escresa). In Luís de Sousa and Susana Coroado (editors), "The Elgar Encyclopedia of Corruption and Society " Edward Elgar. 2024. pp. 185-189.
Empirical studies. In Pieth, Mark, and Tina Søreide (editors), "The Elgar Concise Encyclopedia of Corruption Law." 2023, pp. 201-204.
Private Sector Corruption. In Robert Barrington, Elizabeth David-Barrett and Rebecca Dobson Phillips (editors), Dictionary of Corruption. Agenda Publishing. 2023, pp. 260-262.
The Determinants of Cross-Border Corruption, with Laarni Escresa. Public Choice (2020) 184: 351–378. The published version.
Gossip, Internet-Based Reputation Systems, and Governance. In The Oxford Handbook of Gossip and Reputation, edited by Francesca Giardini and by Rafael Wittek. p. 496-511. 2019.
"Traditional gossip is compared with Internet-based reputation systems, with a focus on their organizational effects. Freely drawing on organizational theory, I present gossip as a tool in the daily struggle for resources, hence for power, which takes place within organizations. The same can be said of Internet-based reputation systems, which in a sense “democratize gossip,” by leveling the playing field when it comes to the formulation, transmission, and processing of information which is relevant for the reputation of the organizational actors. The degree to which such democratization occurs depends on the context, and also on architectural choices: on this count, I refer extensively to the idea of reputation-based governance, as defined and discussed in Picci (2011)."
Corruzione: narrative e disegno dello spazio civile. In Designing Civic Consciousness / ABC per la ricostruzione della coscienza civile. A cura di Gianni Sinni. Quodlibet, 2019.
Il testo deriva da un intervento pubblico all'Università di San Marino: Designing Civic Consciousness : Trasparenza e dati pubblici (Youtube), 31 maggio 2018.
Lo zen e l'arte dell'anticorruzione. with Alberto Vannucci. Altreconomia, 2018.
The Supply-Side of International Corruption: A New Measure and a Critique. European Journal on Criminal Policy and Research (2018) Vol. 24(3), pp. 289-313 (the published version).
The 'Inventor Balance' and the Functional Specialization in Global Inventive Activities. With Luca Savorelli. Economics of Innovation and New Technology (2018), Vol. 27(1): 39-61. The published version.
A New Cross-National Measure of Corruption, with Laarni Escresa. The World Bank Economic Review (2017) 31 (1): 196-219. The Data. The published version.
Trends in corruption around the world. With Laarni Escresa. European Journal on Criminal Policy and Research (2016) Volume 22, Issue 3, pp 543–564. The published version.
Incumbency Effects under Proportional Representation: Leaders and Backbenchers in the Postwar Italian Chamber of Deputies . With Miriam Golden. Legislative Studies Quarterly (2015) Vol 40, Issue 4: 509-538. The published version.
Actors and Strategies of the Bureaucratic Reputation Game, in Organizational Reputation in the Public Sector, pp. 37-53. Editors: Arild Waeraas and Moshe Maor. Routledge, 2014.
The worldwide count of priority patents: A new indicator of inventive activity, with G. de Rassenfosse, H. Dernis, D. Guellec e B. van Pottelsberghe de la Potterie. Research Policy (2013). Vol. 42, pp. 720-737. (The published version)
Federico Varese: Mafias on the Move (Book Review). European Sociological Review 2013, VOl.29(1), 133-136.
Reputation-based governance and making states 'legible' to their citizens. The Reputation Society, pp 141-150. Editors: Hassan Masum and Mark Tovey.The MIT Press (2012).
"A prerequisite to effective citizen engagement in governance is making government behavior transparent and understandable, or "legible", to its citizens. Lucio Picci shows how legibility can enable reputation-based governance and improve the accountability and incentives of government and other large organizations"
Reputation-based Governance, Stanford University Press (2011)
From the preface to the book: "I discuss the role and the relevance of reputation in governance, and argue that an intelligent use of widely available Internet technologies would strengthen reputational mechanisms and significantly improve public governance."
Preface; Read from the introduction.
Reviews:
"This is a highly original, coherent analysis of the potential of the e-governance to transform the nature and performance of the public sector destroying hierarchies, whether of logic or of power, 'with the possibility (or the threat) of random access and information symmetry.'"
Fred Thompson, Professor and Director of the Center for Governance and Public Policy Research, Willamette University
"Reputation-Based Governance presents an innovative and practical proposal to improve government performance through the use of internet-based feedback. Picci's system would give public officials, private contractors, and political appointees incentives to develop strong, positive reputations. E-government can encompass entirely new ways for citizens to hold government to account."
Susan Rose-Ackerman, Professor, Yale Law School and Department of Political Science and author of From Elections to Democracy
The Internationalization of Inventive Activity: A Gravity Model Using Patent Data. Research Policy, Vol: 39, Issue 8, October, 2010, pp: 1070-1081.
Quién paga los trajes? La economía de la corrupción. Revista Bostezo # 4, 2010.
The 2010 Report on R&D in ICT in the European Union (with Geomina Turlea, Daniel Nepelski, Giuditta de Prato, Sven Lindmark, Andrea de Panizza, Paul Desruelle, David Broster). Institute for Prospective Technological Studies, Joint Research Centre, European Commission. July 2010.
The 2009 Report on R&D in ICT in the European Union (with Geomina Turlea, Sven Lindmark, Andrea De Panizza, Martin Ulbrich, Paul Desruelle, Marc Bogdanowicz and David Broster). Institute for Prospective Technological Studies, Joint Research Centre, European Commission. July 2009.
Pork Barrel Politics in Postwar Italy, 1953-1994, American Journal of Political Science, vol. 52, no. 2 (2008). Co-authored with Miriam A. Golden
Reputation-based Governance, First Monday, September 2007
The Reputational Budget and its Uses. Mimeo. Presented at the First World Meeting of the Public Choice Society Amsterdam, March 29 - April 1, 2007
Reputation-based Governance of Public Works, in G. Piga and Khi V. Thai, Economics of Public Procurement, Palgrave (2007). The same paper appeared in "Rivista di Politica Economica".
Rebag-Ware: Reputation-based Governance of Public Works (with Roberto Confalonieri and Cristiano Leoni). Presented at the IST-Africa 2007 Conference & Exhibition, Maputo, Mozambique, 9-11 May 2007.
Dal modello Consip a un sistema di procurement nazionale, in Luigi Fiorentino (a cura di), Lo Stato compratore. L’acquisto di beni e servizi nelle pubbliche amministrazioni, Il Mulino, Bologna.
Reputation-based Governance of Public Works. Rivista di Politica Economica, No I-II, p. 161-184
The Quantitative Evaluation of the Economic Impact of E-Government: a Structural Modelling Approach. Information Economics & Policy (2006), 18, pp. 107-123 Read a methodological note linking the paper to the tradition in econometric structural modelling.
Bad design by design: economics meets other types of interactions, in Sebastiano Bagnara and Gillian Crampton Smith (ed.), Theories and Practice in Interaction Design, Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, New York. (2006).
Corruption and the Management of Public Works in Italy. With Miriam A. Golden. in: International Handbook of Economic Corruption, ed. Susan Rose-Ackerman (Edward Elgar Publisher). (2006).
Misurare l'E-Government: il caso Italiano. Rassegna ASTRID, 31 gennaio 2006.
Proposal for a New Measure of Corruption, Illustrated with Italian Data, with Miriam A. Golden. Economics and Politics, 2005, Vol. 17, n. 1, pp. 37-75.
"Corruption measurement and control. Towards a unified approach". Paper presented at the IV Global Forum on Fighting Corruption, Brasilia, Brasil, 7-10 June 2005.
Più pubblico di così... , con Gustavo Piga. Il Foglio, 9 novembre 2005.
Johanna: A Knowledge Centered Infrastructure for Teleorganizations, With Mauro Gaspari, Davide Guidi, and Andrea Petrucci. Proceedings of E-Challenges 2004.
Discussione a "Reti-Network", (D'Ignazio - Giovannetti), Rivista di Politica Economica, Marzo-Aprile 2004. La Replica di D'Ignazio e Giovannetti.
Seminario sul Software Open Source, CRC Emilia-Romagna - 20 May 2004.
My Scale or Your Meter? Evaluating Methods of Measuring the Internet, with Giampiero Giacomello. Information Economics & Policy, Vol. 15/3, pp. 363-383.
Price dynamics in sequential auctions. New evidence using art auction data, with A.E. Scorcu, Empirica, Vol. 30, pp. 163-178.
Perché l'amministrazione pubblica diffida di Apache? , on the choice of Open Source Software by the Italian Public Administration. La Voce, June 2003.
OSS in the Italian Public Administration : a quantitative survey (May 2003).
"European monetary integration and integration theory: insights from the Italian case", with Osvaldo Croci, in: Amy Verdun (2002) (ed.), "The Coming of the Euro: European Integration Theory and Economic and Monetary Union", Rowman and Littlefield.
Le opere pubbliche dall'Unità d'Italia: l'informazione statistica, in "Rivista di Politica Economica", special issue, May-June 2002. The data. Data on provincial capital stocks and flows, 1970-1998.
"Le infrastrutture in Italia. Le differenze territoriali e l'efficienza della spesa", in: L'Italia nella competizione globale - Regole per il mercato, a cura di Mario Baldassarri, Giampaolo Galli e Gustavo Piga, Edizioni il Sole 24 Ore, Milano. (2002).
Johanna: Open Collaborative Technologies for Teleorganizations, Technical Report UBLCS-2002-12, with Mauro Gaspari, Andrea Petrucci and Giovanni Faglioni.
Fare le infrastrutture, a contribution to the public debate. La Voce, October 2002.
"Le linee guida per l'accessibilità del World Wide Web Consortium (W3C)" (PDF file), in Pierluigi Ridolfi (a cura di), I disabili nella società dell'informazione, Franco Angeli, Milano. (2001)
"L'adozione delle linee guida del W3C sull'accessibilità in Italia" (PDF file), in Pierluigi Ridolfi (a cura di), I disabili nella società dell'informazione, Franco Angeli, Milano. (2001)
"Explaining long- and short-run interactions in time series data", Journal of Business Economics & Statistics, January 2001.
"Internet al Governo", with Claudio Caprara (what happens when the prime minister's office digs the Web) . PDF file. In P.Bonora (2001) (ed.) Comcities. Geografie della comunicazione. Baskerville.
"Public capital and economic activity in the provinces of the Emilia-Romagna region (with G. Peroni). Working Paper, Universtiy of Ferrara, January 2001
Introduzione alla statistica (with B. Pacini). Clueb, Bologna. Read the index and the preface (in Italian). (2000).
Esercizi di Statistica. Ambientati in Romagna e altrove. Clueb, Bologna. Read the first pages of the book and a newspaper article to know more (in Italian). (2000).
"Saving, Growth and Investment. A Macroeconomic Analysis using a Panel of Countries", with O. Attanansio and A.E. Scorcu, Review of Economics and Statistics, May 2000.
"Le verità sfuggenti dell'econometria": what econometrics has to say about empirical research, Keiron, September 2000 (in Italian)
"Il capitale nelle regioni italiane", with F. Bonaglia, Working paper n. 374, Department of Economics, University of Bologna (revised and updated from a 1995 version). Data on provincial capital stocks and flows, 1970-1998.
"Productivity and infrastructure in the Italian regions" Giornale degli Economisti e Annali di Economia, Vol. 58, N. 3-4, pp. 329-353, December 1999.
La Sfera Telematica, Baskerville, October 1999. "To be read":here are some generous reviews (in Italian). And here: Luciano Floridi, "Picci, Lucio, La sfera telematica" 3/3/2000.
A letter on the institutional consequences of the "Caso Zamagni", September 1999 (in Italian).
A contribution to the infrastructure debate, Affari e Finanza" (La Repubblica), 19 July 1999 (in Italian).
Older Working papers
International Agreements, Reputational Screening and The Long-Run Interests of the State, with Simone Meraglia.
The system of international law as an information processing institution. Paper prepared for the XIVth HSE April International Academic Conference on Economic and Social Development, National Research University Higher School of Economics, Moscow, 2-4 April 2013
Miscellanea
Academic plagiarism at the Department of Economics: My position in 2011 (in Italian) (in English) and my position in 1999 (in Italian).
Plagio accademico: il sistema di impunità dell'Università di Bologna. 26/9/2016. Scrivono di questa lettera: rassegna stampa
A small, hands-on project on corruption: I Piedi sul Banco
Hic manebimus optime: Detto & verbalizzato al Consiglio del Dipartimento di Scienze Economiche del 9 marzo 2011: - uno - e - due - La conclusione del caso
Nel 2018, mi candidai alla Presidenza dell'Istat. Questo il programma che presentai.
And now... The Classics ! Biblioteca Augustana