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Individualism and Corruption: A Cross‐Country Analysis
Author(s) -
Jha Chandan,
Panda Bibhudutta
Publication year - 2017
Publication title -
economic papers: a journal of applied economics and policy
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.245
H-Index - 19
eISSN - 1759-3441
pISSN - 0812-0439
DOI - 10.1111/1759-3441.12163
Subject(s) - individualism , collectivism , language change , causality (physics) , perception , social psychology , population , positive economics , sociology , political science , economics , psychology , law , demography , art , physics , literature , quantum mechanics , neuroscience
While the role of cultural norms in determining corruption is well‐explored in the empirical literature, the relationship between a specific aspect of culture, that is, individualism versus collectivism, and corruption is rather unexplored. This paper investigates the relationship between individualism/collectivism and corruption in a large cross‐section of countries. To establish causality, the paper uses an index of historical prevalence of infectious diseases and a measure of genetic distance between the population in a country from that in the United States to instrument the individualism/collectivism variable. We find that more individualistic countries have lower levels of corruption (perception). This relationship is robust to the inclusion of a rich set of control variables and to the use of alternative measures of corruption.