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The Impact of Fiscal Transparency on Corruption: An Empirical Analysis Based on Longitudinal Data

  • Elina De Simone EMAIL logo , Giuseppe Lucio Gaeta and Paulo Reis Mourão

Abstract

Fiscal transparency is considered an essential feature of public financial management and is supposed to provide beneficial governance effects such as reducing corruption. This paper adds to recent empirical literature that specifically investigates the impact of fiscal information disclosure on corruption. Country-level evidence provided by previous studies is exclusively based on cross-sectional econometric analyses, while the present contribution relies on a wide-ranging, country-level dataset of 116 countries that cover a ten-year time span (2003–2012), and on dynamic panel data estimates. These innovations in terms of data and methods provide new, robust empirical support to the claim that fiscal transparency is negatively correlated with corruption.

JEL Classification: D73; H83; D02

Funding statement: University of Naples Parthenope (Grant/Award Number: ‘2015/2016 individual research incentives’).

Acknowledgment

Elina De Simone acknowledges financial support from Parthenope University, Bando di sostegno alla ricerca individuale per il triennio 2015–2017, annualità 2015 & 2016.

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Published Online: 2017-10-10

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