The Effect of Corruption on Environmental Quality: Evidence from a Panel of CIS Countries

초록

This paper is designed to investigate the effect of corruption as a representative of institutional factors on environmental quality for a panel of Commonwealth of Independent States. Data is mostly from World Development Indicators of World Bank covering the period from 2003 to 2013. Corruption data is from World Governance Indicators of World Bank. Panel two-stage least squares considering the endogeneity problem between corruption and economic growth and panel generalized least squares analysis were conducted to estimate the direct and indirect effects of corruption on CO2. The result shows that corruption has been shown to increase CO2 directly while decreasing it indirectly by obstructing economic growth. The total effect of corruption on environmental quality for a panel of Commonwealth of Independent States is estimated to be negative. It confirms the severity of the corruption problem and the necessity for considerable efforts to overcome it for transitional economies to prepare for the low-carbon economy. Also, evidence of the N-shaped Environmental Kuznets Curve is confirmed, showing the possibility of re-degradation after reducing the CO2 level. © 2023, The Author(s), under exclusive licence to Springer Science+Business Media, LLC, part of Springer Nature.

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