Joras Ferwerda on how government policy can improve the ‘good’ in society

What kind of mind-set is needed to carry out ground-breaking research as we do at UUCePP? UUCePP researchers introduce themselves in brief interviews conducted by Elisabetta Manunza and Fredo Schotanus. Joras Ferwerda sheds his light on issues ranging from how government policy can improve the ‘good’ in society,  the need to act before negative effects become visible, to working at 'the highest school' in the country.

'Who' and 'what' are you?
I am Joras Ferwerda, an associate professor at Utrecht University School of Economics. I am a public economist, which means I am interested in how government policy can improve the welfare of our society. Safety is one of the most important determinants of the well-being of everyone in our society. I have therefore been researching crime-fighting policies for about 20 years now. I am trained as an economist, but I also publish in related fields, like criminology, law, political science, and regulation.

What are you working on, and why?
I started my academic career researching anti-money laundering policies specifically. I also wrote my PhD dissertation on this. I am therefore still mostly recognized for my work on this topic. But I have been expanding my research interests to related topics, such as organized crime, tax evasion, and corruption.

Our EU project Bridgegap studies cross-border corruption

Public procurements are specifically vulnerable to corruption. My first publication on corruption was therefore focused on this: corruption in public procurement. Specifically, we (Ioana Deleanu and Brigitte Unger were co-authors) investigated corruption indicators by comparing 96 tenders where corruption was detected with 96 tenders where no corruption was detected. For both groups, we examined whether there were significant differences for a large number of indicators. Only eight of the studied indicators significantly relate to corruption, including large tenders, lack of transparency, and collusion of bidders. These indicators best predict the likelihood of corruption in public procurement.

Although this started as a side project, this is now one of my most referred publications and main research interests. To continue working on corruption, Deleanu, Unger and I applied for EU funding to research anti-corruption policies. The EU awarded funding to Utrecht University and 14 international partners, allowing us to hire two PhD researchers on this topic and research corruption for four years within an EU project called Bridgegap. PhD researcher Felix Alshut will study cross-border corruption flows and its determinants. PhD researcher Andrea Longobucco will focus on how AI can help the prevention and fight against corruption, specifically in public procurement.

Our world seems to be in a continuous state of various crises: can you indicate for one (or possibly several) of these crises how this affects your research?
Good anti-corruption policies can protect our democracy in a time when corrupt people try to threaten this democracy. New regulations and policies can add checks and balances to protect the rule of law before it is too late. In most crises, ‘we’ (public at large, society,…) act as soon as we see negative effects. However, protecting the rule of law must be done before seeing negative effects, because one of the scary negative effects is that new anti-corruption laws and policies will not be adopted and implemented when they threaten the position of the corrupt people in power. Therefore, we have to research how to prevent and fight corruption effectively before such a crisis occurs.

That night I dreamt of an extremely tall school

Name your greatest ambition or your best dream (or both)?
When I was a little boy, my father once explained to me what a university was. I was still too young to really understand his explanation, but I did remember that it was the highest school in the country. This seemed so impressive to me. The highest school in the country. Ok, I thought it was literally about the height of the school and didn’t understand that my father was talking about the level of education, but still: it seemed so impressive to me. That night I dreamed about this extremely tall school, while I was used to going to my little school with only a ground floor and a flat roof. I still find it amazing that I ended up working for this “highest school”.