Anti-corruption and International Trade

Using a set of econometric models, we estimate that there are positive effects of a country’s control of corruption on the value of the country’s imports and exports of goods and services. The analysis utilizes a measure of control of corruption from the World Bank’s World Governance Indicators, with robustness checks using other commonly used measures of corruption. Finally, we use the econometric models to simulate the effects of hypothetical changes in control of corruption in a group of ten developing countries.