The Heterogeneous Effects of Government Size and Press Freedom on Corruption in Sub-Saharan Africa: Method of Moment Quantile Regression Approach

Abstract

Although an active body of literature exists on the relationship between government size and corruption, different findings proliferate the literature due to the nuances of geographical context, methods, and variables employed. The paper employs the novel method of moment quantile regression with fixed effects over the period 1984–2018 to investigate the dynamic impact of government size and press freedom on corruption in Sub-Saharan African (SSA) countries. The main contribution is to examine the impact of government size and press freedom across the conditional distribution of corruption in SSA. The findings show that the impacts of government size and press freedom are heterogeneous across the conditional quantile distribution of corruption. Among the most corrupt countries in SSA, larger government size and press freedom significantly increase corruption. Some policy recommendations are offered based on these findings.