Are Larger Countries Really More Corrupt?
Several authors claim to provide evidence that government corruption is less severe in small than in large countries. The authors demonstrate that this relationship is an artifact of sample selection. Most corruption indicators provide ratings only...
| Main Authors: | , |
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| Format: | Policy Research Working Paper |
| Language: | English en_US |
| Published: |
World Bank, Washington, DC
2014
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| Subjects: | |
| Online Access: | http://documents.worldbank.org/curated/en/2000/11/717454/larger-countries-really-more-corrupt http://hdl.handle.net/10986/19757 |
| Summary: | Several authors claim to provide
evidence that government corruption is less severe in small
than in large countries. The authors demonstrate that this
relationship is an artifact of sample selection. Most
corruption indicators provide ratings only for the countries
in which multi-national investors have the greatest
interest. These tend to include almost all large nations
but, among small nations, only those that are well governed.
The authors find that the relationship between corruption
and country size disappears when one uses either a new
corruption indicator with substantially increased country
coverage or an alternative corruption indicator that covers
all World Bank borrowers without regard to country size.
They also show that the relationship between corruption and
trade intensity--a variable strongly related to
population--disappears when samples less subject to
selection bias are used. |
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