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Transparency International recently published 'Corruption Perceptions Index 2011' which "ranks countries and territories according to their perceived levels of public sector corruption." What is the toll of corruption on a country? One way to assess this is to see if an inverse relation exists between a country’s perceived corruption and its Human Development Index. (The HDI is a "way of measuring development by combining indicators of life expectancy, educational attainment and income.") While I generally agree with Mark Twain -- there are three kinds of lies: lies, damned lies, and statistics -- the broader implications are clear: a country (state, organization) that plays fair does well. No wonder the US, UK, OECD and others continue to bolster initiatives to fight corruption.