Robert Klitgaard

Robert Klitgaard is an American academic, former president of Claremont Graduate University and former dean of the Frederick S. Pardee RAND Graduate School, where he was also the Ford Distinguished Professor of International Development and Security. He currently serves as university professor at Claremont Graduate University.

Klitgaard is the author of twelve books, most recently Prevail: How to Face Upheavals and Make Big Choices with the Help of Heroes (2022) and The Culture and Development Manifesto (2021). His books Controlling Corruption (1988) and Tropical Gangsters (1990) contributed to a worldwide movement against corruption.

Early life
Klitgaard received A.B., M.P.P., and Ph.D. degrees from Harvard University.

Career
Klitgaard served as Professor of Economics at the University of Natal (Durban), Lester Crown Professor of Economics at Yale School of Management, and Associate Professor of Public Policy at Harvard's John F. Kennedy School of Government, where he also served half-time as Special Assistant to Harvard's President Derek Bok. He was also dean and professor of international development and security at Frederick S. Pardee RAND Graduate School. From 2005 to 2009, he served as president of Claremont Graduate University.

Klitgaard has been an advisor to many governments on economic strategy and institutional reform, and his consulting work and research have taken him to more than thirty countries in Latin America, Asia, and Africa. He has been called “the world’s leading expert on corruption” (The Christian Science Monitor). He has served on the faculty of the World Economic Forum, the editorial boards of the Journal of Economic Literature and Theoria, and the Board of the International Development Evaluation Association. He has been a consultant to the Asia Foundation, the Asian Development Bank, the Development Bank of Southern Africa, the Interamerican Development Bank, the IMF, the OECD, the Organization of American States, the White House, the United Nations, USAID, the World Bank, and the Rockefeller and Ford Foundations, as well as to many governments around the world.

In 1980 Klitgaard wrote an internal report on the admissions process at Harvard University. It included a statement that standardized test scores were more likely to overestimate the future academic performance of female and minority students, which elicited a negative response from President Derek Bok. In 1985 he published Choosing Elites which discussed the admissions process in higher education and the predictive qualities of high school grades to predict academic performance in college and success later in life. Test scores do the best of the bunch, but he shows how difficult it is to predict “success” however the researcher may define it."

His book Tropical Gangsters is a biographical tale detailing his time spent as an economic advisor in Equatorial Guinea, as well as some surfing on the island of Bioko. It was a bestseller in the US, and is still read by many college students studying African life and politics.

Personal life
Klitgaard met his wife Elaine when, as a visiting professor at the University of Natal, he asked her to assist in installing a math coprocessor. Klitgaard and Elaine have four children.