Corruption and Economic Growth Nexus: What Has the Arab Spring Changed?

Corruption is an everlasting phenomenon in the Middle East and North Africa (MENA). It is considered one of the fundamental reasons for the Arab incidents that started in Tunisia in 2011. Considering its devastating effects, this paper concentrates on the impacts of corruption at the macro level following the Arab uprisings. Notably, it investigates the impact of corruption on economic growth between 1996-2020. The paper utilizes panel estimators with country-fixed effect regressions given the results of the Hausman test. Panel estimators help control time-variant unobserved heterogeneity and capture both time and country-specific differences. The results indicate that after the Arab Spring, corruption lowers economic growth in the MENA region. One unit increase in control of corruption score of World Governance Indicators (WGI) decreases economic growth between 1.64-2.98 percentage points depending on the model. The results are robust with alternative corruption indexes such as the International Country Risk Guide (ICRG), Varieties of Democracy (V-Dem), and lastly, the Corruption Perception Index (CPI). Furthermore, the Chow test also confirms that 2011 constitutes a structural break in the history of the MENA region. The outcomes indicate that specific policies need to be implemented to alleviate the adverse impacts of corruption in MENA countries.