EU accession: A boon or bane for corruption?

Vincenzo Alfano, Salvatore Capasso and Rajeev Goel
Additional contact information
Vincenzo Alfano: Institute for Studies on the Mediterranean ISMed – CNR
Salvatore Capasso: University of Napoli – Parthenope, ISMed - CNR and CSEF

Journal of Economics and Finance, 2021, vol. 45, issue 1, No 1, 21 pages

Abstract: Abstract The formation and expansion of the European Union (EU) have attracted much attention. However, the impact on corruption in a nation after joining the Union has not been formally studied. Any nation that joins the European Union potentially faces two different and opposite effects on corruption. On the one hand, there are reasons to believe that corruption is going to decrease because of EU initiatives to fight corruption; on the other hand, there are reasons to imagine that corruption may increase due to the increase in bureaucracy and new regulations. Hence, the overall effect on corruption is not entirely clear. This work focuses on the last three rounds of EU entry and empirically studies the effects of joining the EU on corruption. Placing the analysis in the broader literature on the cross-national determinants of corruption, the results suggest that entry into the EU increases corruption. Another insight is that this corruption increase does not hold for nations that are potential EU entrants or that are in the negotiation stage.

Keywords: Corruption; Regulations; Free trade; European Union; Joining the EU; EU negotiations; Government (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: D73 E60 F68 K42 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2021
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (1)

Downloads: (external link)
http://link.springer.com/10.1007/s12197-020-09522-8 Abstract (text/html)
Access to the full text of the articles in this series is restricted.

Related works:
Working Paper: EU Accession: A Boon or Bane for Corruption? (2020)
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:spr:jecfin:v:45:y:2021:i:1:d:10.1007_s12197-020-09522-8

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
http://www.springer. ... cs/journal/12197/PS2

DOI: 10.1007/s12197-020-09522-8

Access Statistics for this article

Journal of Economics and Finance is currently edited by James Payne

More articles in Journal of Economics and Finance from Springer, Academy of Economics and Finance Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Sonal Shukla () and Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing ().