A Replication of “Sorting through Global Corruption Determinants: Institutions and Education Matter—Not Culture” (World Development 2018)

Abstract

An interesting recent paper by Jetter and Parmeter (World Development 2018), (J-P), provides a useful robustness analysis of the significant determinants of cross-country corruption and identifies institutions and literacy as key influences, but a nation’s culture is shown to not matter. Whereas J-P consider a range of potential influences on corruption, their findings are based on a single measure of corruption. This note considers two additional widely used measures of corruption and tests the robustness of J-P’s findings. Results show support for a number of J-P’s findings but also show the sensitivity of their main findings to the sample size, and that the influence of culture is shown to be not insignificant. This suggests appropriate caution be used in framing policies, especially when they are based on a single measure of variables that are plagued by measurement issues.