At the same time the availability of these indexes has also offered ample opportunities
for their “abuse” (Williams and Siddique 2008). For example, many
authors have been using data without fully understanding them and have incorrectly
used them as proxy variables, the most famous cases being those authors that used
the data of the “Corruption” variable from the International Country Risk Guide in
econometric analysis investigating the effects of corruption without realizing that
the variable is actually a measure of political risk associated with corruption rather
than corruption per se (see the discussion in Lambsdorff, 1999).