Title: Corruption and openess: the case of the Middle East

Authors: Rock-Antoine Mehanna

Addresses: Assistant Professor of Strategic Management and Economics, Wartburg College, Waverly, IA, USA.

Abstract: Economic literature has provided very limited work on the relationship between quality of governance and international trade. Besides few studies that have examined either the impact of corruption on few industry exports [see Lambsdorff, 1998] or the effect of political regimes on trade among developed economies [see Summary, 1989; Morrow et al., 1998], this timely topic is almost absent in contemporary economic literature. To the best of my knowledge, the relationship between corruption and political freedom, and openness has not yet been explored. Unlike past studies, this paper examines the impact of corruption and political freedom on trade openness in the Middle East. Given the importance of religion and culture in the Middle East region, this paper employs a model specifically developed to account for pertinent econometric specifications. Findings reveal that less open Middle Eastern economies are (perceived as) significantly more corrupt, but are not necessarily less politically free than the model predicts.

Keywords: corruption; international trade; international business; governance; trade openess; Middle East; political freedom; religion; culture.

DOI: 10.1504/JIBED.2003.007812

Journal for International Business and Entrepreneurship Development, 2003 Vol.1 No.1, pp.80 - 87

Published online: 23 Sep 2005 *

Full-text access for editors Full-text access for subscribers Purchase this article Comment on this article