Corruption in Emerging and Developing Economies: Evidence from a Pooled Cross-Section

Corruption has affected systems of governance for thousands of years. Existing evidence suggests that it is especially common in "emerging and developing economies," yet cross-country analysis in this context is rare. We examine the impact of political, economic, and media freedom on corruption in a large sample of countries across multiple time periods to investigate the marginal differences within each. The results show that increased economic and press freedoms are associated with lower levels of corruption in developing countries. We find that although increased political freedom through democratization is statistically significant, it reduces corruption only in developed countries and may increase levels of corruption in developing countries.