Is corruption really persistent?

Theoretical and empirical research on corruption generally concludes that corruption is persistent. However, using International Country Risk Guide data for the period 1984-2008 for 101 countries, we find strong evidence that corruption changes over time. In the present study, corruption levels of many countries decline, whereas those of other countries rise over the same period. We find that this convergence process is not continuous: there is an improvement in world corruption in the first part of our sample period, but a worsening in the second half

Governance and growth revisited

Recent studies yield diverging outcomes on the governance-growth relationship. In this paper we construct a new index of governance using a latent variable approach and test whether this index is related to growth with varying samples of countries and different conditioning variables. The results show that our index has a positive and significant impact on economic growth. This conclusion is fairly robust for various samples and conditioning variables

Governance and growth revisited

Recent studies yield diverging outcomes on the governance-growth relationship. In this paper we construct a new index of governance using a latent variable approach and test whether this index is related to growth with varying samples of countries and different conditioning variables. The results show that our index has a positive and significant impact on economic growth. This conclusion is fairly robust for various samples and conditioning variables