WTO membership and corruption

Sanchari Choudhury

European Journal of Political Economy, 2019, vol. 60, issue C

Abstract: Despite widespread belief that accession process and formal membership to the World Trade Organization (WTO) improve the quality of governance within a country, there is no convincing empirical evidence to substantiate this thought. Here, I investigate whether the WTO status of a country has a causal effect on firm-level reports of political corruption using a nonparametric partial identification approach to bound the average treatment effects (ATEs). I also analyze conditional ATEs to explore various sources of potential heterogeneity. Contrary to popular belief, I find that WTO membership is likely to have no causal effect on domestic corruption overall. And if anything, it is likely to increase corrupt practices, particularly among firms that are established post WTO membership and those that are government owned.

Keywords: WTO; Corruption; Partial identification; Misclassification (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: C21 D73 F13 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2019
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (9)

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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:eee:poleco:v:60:y:2019:i:c:s0176268018304622

DOI: 10.1016/j.ejpoleco.2019.07.004

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