A paper co-authored by John McMillan -- coordinator of CDDRL's Program on Economic Performance -- has found that bribing the news media appears to be the most effective means of bribery, delivering the most "bang for the buck," compared with bribing politicians, police officials or judges.

For their paper, published in the fall 2004 issue of the Journal of Economic Perspectives, McMillan and co-author Pablo Zoido conducted a detailed study of an unusual data set: records of bribes kept by Vladimiro Montesinos, the former head of Peru's secret service.

In his efforts to protect Peru's then-President Alberto Fujimori, Montesinos in the 1990s made payoffs totaling more than $3 million a month to police officials, key judges, opposition political leaders and the owners of the country's major television stations, according to the records. This allowed McMillan and Zoido to add up the bribes by institution and then compare them to see where Montesinos -- judging by the number and amount of the bribes he paid -- thought it most effective to spend the money.

Bribing the news media, particularly TV news stations, emerged as the Montesinos' clear preference. For example, the study reports, one television channel's bribe was four times larger than the total amount of the bribes paid to opposition politicians.

The study was featured in a July 11 column in the Washington Post that discusses new research findings.