Saturday, 27 March 2010: 09:40
Corruption, Freedom and Prosperity
This paper extends the literature on cultural influences on economic performance, by testing the effect of corruption and freedom on the per capita level of economic prosperity. Previous studies have employed GDP to indicate economic performance, but we use a new data set involving the broader indicator of prosperity. Single-equation and panel data estimates from more than one hundred countries are reported that facilitate cross-border comparisons. Economic development and world financial markets are affected by this issue, with examples of related earlier studies including Soreide (2003), and Mocan (2004), Svensson (2005).