The influence of informal institutions on the degree of corruption in a cross-country context
Keywords
No Thumbnail Available
Authors
Issue Date
2016-07-28
Language
en
Journal Title
Journal ISSN
Volume Title
Publisher
Abstract
This study investigates the influence of informal institutions on corruption in several countries. First, it relates psychological threat mechanisms to corruption and conducts hypotheses tests in a sample of more than 20 European countries in 2002-2015. Second, in a worldwide sample containing over 100 countries across the world in 2002-2015, it relates religious orthodoxy and societal hierarchy to corruption. It provides an alternative for the ‘hierarchical religions’ explanation of corruption by relating societal hierarchy to corruption. It also introduces new proxies to measure religious orthodoxy. This study contributes to the institutional economics literature by further examining the relationships between beliefs, norms, and psychological state of affairs, and the workings of institutions. The results show strong evidence of the influence of psychological threat mechanisms on corruption, but reject relationships between societal hierarchy and corruption, and religious orthodoxy and corruption. The results also present some anomalies to the hierarchical religions explanation. The findings are robust to a large number of model specifications and estimation procedures.
Description
Citation
Supervisor
Faculty
Faculteit der Managementwetenschappen