Impact of Economic Freedom on Corruption Revisited in ASEAN Countries: A Bayesian Hierarchical Mixed-Effects Analysis

Nguyen Ngoc Thach and Bui Ngoc
Additional contact information
Nguyen Ngoc Thach: Institute for Research Science and Banking Technology, Banking University of Ho Chi Minh City, 39 Ham Nghi Street, District 1, Ho Chi Minh City 700000, Vietnam

Economies, 2021, vol. 9, issue 1, 1-16

Abstract: Conceptual and applied studies assessing the linkage between economic freedom and corruption expect that economic freedom boosts economic growth, improves income, and reduces levels of corruption. However, most of them have concentrated on developed and developing groups, while the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) countries have drawn much less attention. Empirical findings are most often conflicting. Moreover, previous studies performed rather simple frequentist techniques regressing one or some freedom indices on corruption that do not allow for grasping all the aspects of economic freedom as well as capturing variations across countries. The study aims to investigate the effects of ten components of economic freedom index on the level of corruption in ten ASEAN countries from 1999 to 2018. By applying a Bayesian hierarchical mixed-effects regression via a Monte Carlo technique combined with the Gibbs sampler, the obtained results suggest several findings as follows: ( i ) In view of probability, the predictors property rights, government integrity, tax burden, business freedom, labor freedom, and investment freedom have a strongly positive impact on the response perceived corruption index; ( ii ) Government spending, trade freedom, and financial freedom exert a strongly negative effect, while the influence of monetary freedom is ambiguous; and ( iii ) There is an existence of not only random intercepts but also random coefficients at the country level impacting the model outcome. The empirical outcome could be of major importance for more efficient corruption controlling in emerging countries, including ASEAN nations.

Keywords: economic freedom; corruption; economic growth; Bayesian hierarchical mixed-effects regression; ASEAN countries (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: E F I J O Q (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2021
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.mdpi.com/2227-7099/9/1/3/pdf (application/pdf)
https://www.mdpi.com/2227-7099/9/1/3/ (text/html)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:gam:jecomi:v:9:y:2021:i:1:p:3-:d:474834

Access Statistics for this article

Economies is currently edited by Ms. Adore Zhou

More articles in Economies from MDPI
Bibliographic data for series maintained by MDPI Indexing Manager ().