by Caitlin Kenney

Young workers fix a road in Indonesia.
Bay Ismoyo/AFP/Getty Images)

Young workers seal a gap in concrete pavement at a road construction site in Indonesia.

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On today's Planet Money:

We hear and read stories of corruption every day, but finding cold hard data on the subject is so hard that MIT economics professor, Ben Olken, had to go dig up roads in Indonesia to get some.

Olken and his team set out to measure the amount of raw materials that went missing when the government gave local villagers money for projects like building roads. The study not only required the researchers to dig up roads — but also to build a few of their own.

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