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I check the robustness of my results using official corruption conviction data made available by the Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse data warehouse (TRACFED), in place of the PIN data. The TRACFED data come from administrative
records of the U.S. district attorneys and
categorize convictions based on the official program categories provided by the USDOJ. This
TRACFED data also contain the actual referral
date, so I will be able to further check the robustness of my results by measuring corruption
convictions at the time of referral, rather than the time of conviction. In this case, I can measure corruption by looking at the number of guilty defendants for the crime of official corruption at the time when the crime likely took place. Further, using the TRACFED data, I can also eliminate corruption cases dealing with drug charges and Postal Service property, which are two specific types of crimes mentioned in Cordis and Milyo (2016) and Boylan and Long (2003) as being a
cause for concern. The specific TRACFED measures I use in this article will come in three different forms, and are separated out into federal, state, and local corruption.....[citing TRAC Data and Reports].
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