The UCI 1.0 was piloted by Agora faculty Yuen Yuen Ang in her award-winning book, China’s Gilded Age, and her article “Unbundling Corruption.” Currently, the UCI 2.0 Research Team is creating an updated and expanded version of this index. This project is supported by the Center for Economy & Society under the SNF Agora Institute, at Johns Hopkins University.
Requesting your participation in UCI 2.0
In 2025, our team will be requesting experts and professionals to participate in UCI 2.0.
If you are willing to take the UCI Expert Survey and meet our qualification criteria (see below), please provide your email below, and we will send you a personalized survey link.
The survey takes only 15 minutes to complete. Your responses will be anonymized, meaning our team will not know the identity of any response. The UCI 2.0 has received IBR approval from JHU and anonymized responses is a requirement.
Qualified responses should have at least five years of professional experience in any one country, in one or more roles listed below:
- Researcher or analyst specializing in this country
- Journalist covering this country
- Lawyer, accountant, or auditor
- Professional in a company or business owner
- Professional in the public sector
- Professional in a civic organization
Innovative and Rigorous Design
The UCI offers two important innovations over existing global corruption metrics such as Transparency International’s Corruption Perception Index (CPI).
- Whereas existing metrics conceptualize corruption as a one-dimensional problem (that is, only one score for each country), the UCI unbundles corruption into four distinct types:
- Petty theft
- Grand theft
- Speed money (buying exemption from red-tape)
- Access money (buying access and influence)
- Whereas existing metrics are composite scores using third-party surveys (that is, they do not design or collect their own surveys), the UCI is constructed using a survey that our team designs and implements, thereby ensuring both methodological rigor and quality responses.
Scholarly, Media and Policy Impact
Since its release, the UCI 1.0 has generated national and global interest. Highlights include:
- Featured in an interview in Freakonomics Radio, the episode was described by the host Stephen Dubner as “one of the most powerful and fascinating pieces we’ve done in some time.”
- The UCI is taught in leading business schools, including the Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania and Stanford Graduate School of Business.
- The UCI is extensively cited in the Helen Clark Foundation’s 2024 report on transparency. Prof. Ang spoke at the report’s launch with former New Zealand Prime Minister Helen Clark.
Eminent scholars have described UCI 1.0 (published in China’s Gilded Age) in these ways:
- “an innovative methodology to capture the multidimensional nature of corruption… helping to disentangle the relationship between corruption and development more broadly. – Prize Committee, Alice Amsden Book Award 2021, SASE (Society for Advancement of Socio-Economics)
- “Ang develops provocative new theory to distinguish among different types of corruption, each of which has a distinct impact on economic activity. She combines this with novel exploration of data to derive support for her theoretical arguments.” – Prize Committee, 2022 Douglas North Book Award 2022, SIOE (Society for Institutional & Organizational Economics)
Thank you!
Yuen Yuen Ang (Alfred Chandler Chair of Political Economy)
Bryce Corrigan (Senior Statistician and Lecturer)
Celine Sui (Research Assistant)
For more information
For a recent blog summary, see “The Unbundled Corruption Index (UCI): Prototyping a multi-dimensional measure,” U4 Anti-Corruption Center Blog, 6 March 2025. https://www.u4.no/blog/the-unbundled-corruption-index. (open access)
YY Ang. 2020. Chapter 2: “Unbundling Corruption Across Countries.” In China’s Gilded Age: The Paradox of Economic Boom and Vast Corruption. Cambridge University Press. (Winner of the Douglass North Best Book Award, Alice Amsden Book Award, and Honorable Mention for Barrington Moore Book Prize)
YY Ang. 2020. “Unbundling Corruption: Revisiting Six Questions on Corruption,” Global Perspectives.
YY Ang. 2020. “Unbundling Corruption: Why it Matters and How to Do It,” OECD Development Matters Blog, 25 June 2020.
“Is the US Really Less Corrupt than China?” Interview on Freakonomics. 3 Nov 2021.
YY Ang. 2024. “Mismeasuring Corruption.” Project Syndicate. 22 March 2024.
YY Ang. 2024. “How Exceptional is China’s Crony Capitalist Boom.” Project Syndicate. 10 May 2024. Also available on SSRN as “Why Has China’s Economy Grown Despite Corruption and Is Now Stagnating?”
Video lecture, “Unbundling Corruption: Why it Matters and How to Do it,” LSE Cutting Edge Issues in Development Series, posted 2021