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DESCRIPTION:The East Asia Program at the Moynihan Institute presents Minh D
uc Trinh from Purdue University. \;Autocrats govern from the top but a
re dependent on information from below. However\, regime agents at lower l
evels of government who supply this information have both the incentive an
d capacity to manipulate it\, faking government data and statistics to app
ear more competent and loyal than they really are. This statistical misrep
orting problem becomes even more pervasive and more consequential in regim
es that rely on data and statistics in their decision making\, but even re
gime rulers are unable to tell exactly which of their agents are lying and
by how much. A novel method based on nighttime luminosity succeeded in qu
antifying the degree of statistical misreporting in Vietnam and China\, tw
o surviving (and thriving) single-party Communist regimes in Asia. Knowled
ge about disaggregated misreporting behaviors then shed light on statistic
al misreporting’s debilitating effects on authoritarian governance. \;
Minh Trinh is an assistant professor of political science at Purdue Univer
sity. A scholar of comparative politics\, Trinh studies the inner workings
of durable authoritarian regimes. His primary research focuses on the fal
sification of government statistics and its impact on authoritarian govern
ance at the highest level. Another research agenda explores the origins of
citizens’ voluntary compliance to authoritarian rule at the bottom. Trinh
received a Ph.D. in political science from the Massachusetts Institute of
Technology and was previously at the Weatherhead Center\, Harvard Univers
ity\, as a Raphael Morrison Dorman Memorial Postdoctoral Fellow.
DTEND:20240329T183000Z
DTSTAMP:20260417T032632Z
DTSTART:20240329T170000Z
LOCATION:
SEQUENCE:0
SUMMARY:Statistical Misreporting: The View from (Very) High Above
UID:RFCALITEM639119787922068316
X-ALT-DESC;FMTTYPE=text/html:The East Asia Program at the Moynihan Insti
tute presents Minh Duc Trinh from Purdue University. \;
Au
tocrats govern from the top but are dependent on information from below. H
owever\, regime agents at lower levels of government who supply this infor
mation have both the incentive and capacity to manipulate it\, faking gove
rnment data and statistics to appear more competent and loyal than they re
ally are. This statistical misreporting problem becomes even more pervasiv
e and more consequential in regimes that rely on data and statistics in th
eir decision making\, but even regime rulers are unable to tell exactly wh
ich of their agents are lying and by how much. A novel method based on nig
httime luminosity succeeded in quantifying the degree of statistical misre
porting in Vietnam and China\, two surviving (and thriving) single-party C
ommunist regimes in Asia. Knowledge about disaggregated misreporting behav
iors then shed light on statistical misreporting’s debilitating effects on
authoritarian governance. \;
Minh Trinh is an assistant professor of politi
cal science at Purdue University. A scholar of comparative politics\, Trin
h studies the inner workings of durable authoritarian regimes. His primary
research focuses on the falsification of government statistics and its im
pact on authoritarian governance at the highest level. Another research ag
enda explores the origins of citizens’ voluntary compliance to authoritari
an rule at the bottom. Trinh received a Ph.D. in political science from th
e Massachusetts Institute of Technology and was previously at the Weatherh
ead Center\, Harvard University\, as a Raphael Morrison Dorman Memorial Po
stdoctoral Fellow.