Publicity as a deterrent to corruption

From http://www.voxeu.org/index.php?q=node/345:
"The authors study a newspaper campaign in Uganda, which aimed at reducing capture of public funds by providing schools with information to monitor local officials’ handling of a large education program. Survey evidence showed that on average only 20% of the funds for primary schools’ expenditure reached the schools in the mid-1990s, most schools received nothing and the bulk of the grants was captured by local government officials in charge of the distribution. Traditionally, anticorruption programs target the problem through building legal and financial institution for control, however in poor countries these prove to be weak and among the most corrupt. For this reason, the Ugandan government decided to begin publicizing information on amount and timing of disbursement of the school grants.
The authors find that public access to information can indeed be a powerful deterrent to capture of funds at the local level. Head teachers in schools closer to a newspaper outlet were found to be more knowledgeable of the rules governing the grant program and the timing of releases by the central government. These schools also managed to claim a significantly larger part of their entitlement after the newspaper campaign was initiated. Furthermore, the reduction in capture had a positive effect on both enrolment and student learning."
The authors are Ritva Reinikka Jakob Svensson and a non-gated version of their paper "The Returns from Reducing Corruption: Evidence from Education in Uganda" is available here:
http://econ.lse.ac.uk/staff/rburgess/eea/svenssonjeea.pdf