Daniel Kaufmann (economist)

Career

At the World Bank, he held positions working on programs in Eastern Europe and the former Soviet Union, Africa and Latin America, as well as conducting applied research around the globe. First as a senior economist and then as a lead economist, he specialized on trade, industry, private sector, regulation, macroeconomics, governance and anti-corruption. After the collapse of the Soviet Union, he became the first chief of mission of the World Bank to Ukraine, where he led the bank's program of support for economic reforms, as well as developing survey techniques to measure corruption and the unofficial economy. Thereafter, as a Director of the World Bank Institute, he initiated and led the program on global governance and anti-corruption. He also served as lead economist in the research department and was later a manager of the finance, regulation and governance unit. He co-authored a number of publications and books, such as the World Development Report, and “The Quality of Growth”, the "Investment Climate around the World" and the "Governance Matters" series.

He was also a visiting scholar at Harvard. Since 2009, Kaufmann has been affiliated with the Brookings Institution, first as a senior fellow, leading the work on governance and anti-corruption, and since late 2012, as a non-resident senior fellow. Between 2012 and 2020, he was the President and CEO of the Natural Resource Governance Institute (NRGI), an independent global policy institute focused on research and evidence-driven policy advice and advocacy, with operations in over a dozen countries. He became President Emeritus at NRGI on July 31, 2020.

Kaufmann is a researcher, policy advisor to leaders of states, multilateral organizations, industry and nongovernmental organizations. He is also a frequent keynote speaker on governance and development. With his teams, he has developed approaches to construct indicators for country governance (e.g., the Worldwide Governance Indicators and the Natural Resource Governance Institute's Resource Governance Index) and designed diagnostic tools and survey methodologies for good governance and anti-corruption programs.

He has also provided practical advice to countries based on his research on economic development, governance, the unofficial economy, macroeconomics, investment, corruption, privatization, and urban and labor economics. His writings with co-authors are among the most downloaded in the Social Science Research Network.

Professional contribution

Governance and Corruption

While at the World Bank during the 1990s, Kaufmann and his colleague Aart Kraay developed the Worldwide Governance Indicators (WGI). The Worldwide Governance Indicators measure six dimensions of governance: Voice and Accountability, Political Stability and Absence of Violence, Government Effectiveness, Regulatory Quality, Rule of Law and Control of Corruption. The WGI project covers more than 200 countries since 1996, and is updated on a yearly basis. The methodology used for the indicators’ construction can be found in The Worldwide Governance Indicators: Methodology and Analytical Issues. The WGI indicators are used by multiple organizations, countries, risk rating agencies and industry bodies. In addition to its methodological approach, country coverage and the ability to monitor governance performance of countries for over two decades, the WGI was also the first such indicator that addressed quantitatively the measurement of its own margins of error (confidence intervals), initiating a trend in the field.

With colleagues at the World Bank, he also led the development and implementation of in-depth, in-country governance and anti-corruption diagnostic tools, which were carried out in dozens of countries as inputs to governance reform programs.

State Capture and Legal Corruption

Kaufmann, with colleagues, also developed new approaches to measure governance and corruption, focused first on the post-socialist countries in transition, and, with Joel Hellman, launched a project on what they labelled as the challenge of state capture, which analyzed the transition economies of the former Soviet Union during the late 1990s (in articles such as "Seize the state, seize the day: State capture, corruption, and influence in transition"). The notion of state capture has since become more widely applied, and recently they have provided expert testimony on the topic to the Judicial Commission of Inquiry into Allegations of State Capture of South Africa.

Related to some aspects of state capture, which are not always strictly illegal, Kaufmann had written about the notion of “legal corruption.” With his co-author, Pedro Vicente, he analyzed how laws can be shaped so to legalize certain acts, which a broad consensus might consider as unethical or corrupt.

Good Governance and Anti-corruption Programs

Kaufmann continued working and advising on governance, corruption and state capture matters at the global, regional and national level, including focusing in resource-rich countries and on the natural resource sector in recent years. He has also researched the relevance of civil liberties to address corruption and improve development prospects, as well as the links between human rights and corruption control. He has also recently been an expert member of high level advisory panels for multilateral organizations, such as the Inter-American Development Bank, co-authoring the November 2018 Report of the Expert Advisory Group on Anti-Corruption, Transparency, and Integrity in Latin America and the Caribbean, (selected by Foreign Affairs as one of the top books of 2019) as well as a co-author of a report to the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development as a member of the High-Level Advisory Group on Anti-Corruption and Integrity to that organization.

Natural Resource Governance

The Natural Resource Governance Institute, which Kaufmann leads, released the Resource Governance Index in 2017. The index focuses on transparency and accountability in resource-rich countries and provided evidence on the substantial governance and implementation deficits in most countries surveyed, while also identifying successes, including in emerging economies. Other recent publications on governance and natural resources have appeared at Brookings Institution as well as opinion pieces in the Financial Times. His work is widely referenced in academic circles and in the international media.

Global indicators

• Worldwide Governance Indicators
• 2017 Resource Governance Index
• Ibrahim Index of African Governance