Can democracy and religiosity explain corruption? An empirical study of cross-country data
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The democracy-corruption relation and the religiosity-corruption relation are analyzed. Both univariate relations are strong in the cross-country perspective, which is taken to reflect the long run. Democracies are less corrupt, while religious countries are more corrupt. However, the relations belong to a complex pattern, with long soft lags and much spuriousness, as the three variables also have parallel transitions as a function of income. When the relations are controlled for the transitions, the effects decrease substantially but keep the signs. The religiosity-corruption relation has a micro-macro problem, as the positive sign in the between-country result is contradicted by a negative within-countries result. Jel: E26, K42, Z12
