David Szakonyi

UK property markets are thought to be a common destination for corrupt and criminal assets, who often invest through offshore shell companies. Following the Russian invasion of Ukraine in 2022, we study the impact of the introduction of a policy in the UK intended to eliminate the anonymous ownership of property by requiring offshore companies to file their beneficial owners on public register. We find that new purchases by companies based in tax havens fell substantially following government announcements that the policy would be introduced that year, and further declines following the establishment of a register of ownership. While the policy has effectively led the offshore market to slow, between £45–78 billion worth of UK real estate is still owned by companies based in tax havens, some of which have yet to comply with their reporting obligations. We do not find strong evidence of price effects nor substitution into ownership through suspicious domestic companies, although larger movements may manifest as firms respond finalization of the policy in January 2023.

Despite the private equity industry’s rapidly growing presence in the U.S. economy, we know far more about its influence on corporate governance than its role in shaping public policy. In this paper, we document how private equity's distinctive ownership structure facilitates coordinated political activity among its portfolio companies, revealing a covert channel of influence over policymaking. First, we assemble a novel dataset of U.S. leveraged buyouts from 2000-2018 and match them to federal lobbying records. Applying a doubly robust difference-in-differences estimator, we show that portfolio companies acquired by private equity subsequently increase their federal lobbying. Then using an issue-level dataset, we find that after a buyout, portfolio companies are five times more likely to lobby on the very issues their PE acquirers had themselves lobbied on before. These findings demonstrate that private equity’s success owes not just to financial and operational engineering, but also to a deliberate coordination and optimization of political influence across portfolios.

Does higher education undermine authoritarian stability? While classic modernization theory posits that education fosters democratization, recent scholarship suggests autocrats can strategically use higher education to achieve ideological control and prolong their rule. We reconcile these perspectives by theorizing that elite and non-elite universities in autocracies produce divergent political outcomes. To test this, we exploit Russia's prestigious Olimpiada competition in Russia, which grants top competitors across 21 subjects automatic admission into the Russian university of their choice. Using a brand new dataset of over 22,000 students combined with a novel behavioral measure of support for Alexey Navalny's Anti-Corruption Foundation, we show that Olimpiada's top performers are significantly more likely to support the opposition than their counterparts. Our findings reveal a paradox: while autocrats invest in higher education to drive economic growth, elite institutions may incubate dissent.

High value real estate is a popular destination for corrupt and criminal foreign assets, in part caused by limited oversight and lack of transparency in real estate transactions. In response to these concerns, the US Treasury began implementing a series of Geographic Targeting Orders (GTOs) in 2016, forcing corporate buyers making all-cash purchases in targeted counties to report the company’s ultimate owner. To estimate the causal effect of GTOs on these types of transactions, we combine data on on millions of real estate transactions over the period 2014-2019 with a staggered difference-in-differences design. Our analysis suggests the absence of an aggregate effect of the GTOs on corporate all-cash purchases in targeted counties, as well as little evidence of substitution into other types of purchases. We contend that the lack of overt enforcement and validation of the ownership requirements failed to create a sufficient deterrent effect to drive out participation in the sector by illicit actors.

When can autocrats subvert democracy without paying electoral costs? Although ideological and partisan attachments are weak in many contemporary autocracies, regime supporters often have a strong emotional aversion toward the opposition, who the regime portrays as traitors. Drawing on the literature on affective polarization, we investigate whether regime supporters who hold such attitudes are less likely to punish regime candidates who behave undemocratically using a vignette survey experiment conducted in Russia. We find little evidence that regime supporters are more likely to excuse most types of undemocratic actions by their copartisan candidates. However, those supporters who express antipathy toward the regime’s staunchest opposition—Alexei Navalny and his supporters—are more likely to condone anti-democratic actions that specifically sideline Navalny’s movement. Negative affect toward the opposition may thus help explain how autocrats survive the periodic rise of challengers; yet it does not guarantee that they will avoid backlash for undemocratic actions.

Corruption is often rampant within state bureaucracies and judicial systems, yet we know little about its micro-level consequences on policymaking and the provision of public goods. In this paper, we investigate how corruption shapes property rights protection in one prominent autocracy: Russia. First, we use income and asset disclosures to construct novel individual-level measures of corruption for 366 commercial court judges working in and around Moscow. Then, drawing on data from more than 400,000 court cases heard between 2011-2018, we leverage random assignment of cases to judges to show that corrupt judges are much more likely to find in favor of private firms in their disputes with government agencies. Not only are these decisions of lower judicial quality, but they tend to favor disreputable firms. In contrast to existing studies' emphasis on political pressure's impact on Russian court cases, we show that judicial corruption enables firms to capture the state, depriving it of financial resources and undermining the rule of law.

How does the opposition govern under autocracy? Most authoritarian regimes tolerate some degree of internal opposition, allowing it to contest and even take power. Yet we know little about how such power-sharing dynamics affect governance. In this paper, I exploit a unique instance where the opposition won control of political institutions in a prominent electoral autocracy: the 2017 Moscow municipal elections. Using a difference-in-differences design, I find that opposition control of municipal councils reduced the financial returns from office for ruling party deputies. This decrease in earnings comes from opposition-held councils removing rent-seeking opportunities by organizing more competitive procurement, reducing unnecessary budget expenditures, and curbing over-the-top compensation. Using a survey experiment, I then show that voters prefer opposition candidates with municipal governing experience over ruling party ones without it. Even in repressive environments, challenging autocratic rule may be well served by joining rather than boycotting institutions.

Do corrupt officials govern differently in elected office? This article develops a theoretical framework and analyzes new data from financial disclosures to estimate the governing costs of corruption. First, I uncover substantial hidden wealth held by roughly one quarter of the legislators in the Russian Duma; these “kompromat deputies” are vulnerable to damaging information being used against them by the regime. Analyzing their behavior in office, I find that these deputies are less active and more absent members of parliament. When called to vote, kompromat deputies from the opposition also more eagerly support the regime’s political agenda. Finally, kompromat deputies are less likely to win reelection, suggesting that they have shorter time horizons as well as that parties have incentives to rotate them out. Autocrats permit and then monitor corruption in order to co-opt potential challengers, who in turn trade loyalty to the regime in exchange for opportunities to self-enrich.

Bureaucrats implement policy. How important are they for a state’s productivity? And do the tradeoffs between policies depend on their effectiveness? Using data on 16 million public purchases in Russia, we show that 39 percent of the variation in prices paid for narrowly defined items is due to the individual bureaucrats and organizations who manage procurement. Low-price buyers also display higher spending quality. Theory suggests that such differences in effectiveness can be pivotal for policy design. To illustrate, we show that a common one—bid preferences for domestic suppliers—substantially improves procurement performance, but only when implemented by ineffective bureaucrats.

Does the passage of anticorruption reforms affect the types of people that want to serve in government? This article evaluates the effects of a common tool to fight corruption—financial disclosures—using data on 25,642 elections in Putin-era Russia. I argue that financial disclosures function like a personal audit, generating information for journalists and prosecutors to investigate illicit gains earned inside and outside of government. Exploiting staggered elections, I find that requiring financial disclosures leads to roughly 25% fewer incumbents seeking reelection and 10% fewer candidates with suspicious financial histories. Greater media freedom and law enforcement capacity further increase the risk of corruption and tax evasion being uncovered, resulting in even fewer candidacies from those criminally exposed. Increasing transparency changes the incentives for serving in elected office, even in settings where other political motives may be at play.

Incumbents have many tools to tip elections in their favor, yet little is known about how they choose between strategies. By comparing various tactics, this article argues that electoral malpractice centered on manipulating institutions offers the greatest effectiveness while shielding incumbents from public anger and criminal prosecution. To demonstrate this, the study focuses on a widespread institutional tactic: preventing candidates from accessing the ballot. First, in survey experiments, Russian voters respond less negatively to institutional manipulations, such as rejecting candidates, than to blatant fraud, such as ballot box stuffing. Next, using evidence from 25,935 Russian mayoral races, the article shows that lower societal and implementation costs enable incumbents to strategically reject candidacies from credible challengers and then reduce their electoral vulnerability. In all, the technology behind specific manipulations helps determine when and how incumbents violate electoral integrity.

Does electoral fraud stabilize authoritarian rule or undermine it? The answer to this question rests in part on how voters evaluate regime candidates who engage in fraud. Using a survey experiment conducted after the 2016 elections in Russia, the authors find that voters withdraw their support from ruling party candidates who commit electoral fraud. This effect is especially large among strong supporters of the regime. Core regime supporters are more likely to have ex ante beliefs that elections are free and fair. Revealing that fraud has occurred significantly reduces their propensity to support the regime. The authors’ findings illustrate that fraud is costly for autocrats not just because it may ignite protest, but also because it can undermine the regime’s core base of electoral support. Because many of its strongest supporters expect free and fair elections, the regime has strong incentives to conceal or otherwise limit its use of electoral fraud.