Please use this identifier to cite or link to this item: https://hdl.handle.net/10419/216603 
Year of Publication: 
2020
Series/Report no.: 
CESifo Working Paper No. 8207
Publisher: 
Center for Economic Studies and ifo Institute (CESifo), Munich
Abstract: 
The formation and expansion of the European Union (EU) have attracted much attention. However, the impact on the level of corruption in a nation after joining the Union has not been formally studied. Any nation that joins the European Union potentially faces two different and opposite effects on corruption. On the one hand, there are reasons to believe that corruption is going to decrease because of the efforts of the EU to fight corruption or because of the opening of the markets to trade; on the other hand, there are reasons to imagine that corruption may increase due to the increase in bureaucracy and new regulations. Hence, the overall effect is not entirely clear from this perspective. This work focuses on the last three rounds of EU entry and empirically studies the effects of joining the EU on corruption. Placing the analysis in the broader literature on the determinants of corruption, the results suggest that entry into the EU increases corruption. However, equally insightful is that this corruption increase does not hold for nations that are potential entrants or that are in the negotiation stage.
Subjects: 
corruption
regulations
free trade European Union
joining the EU
EU negotiations
government
JEL: 
D73
E60
F68
K42
Document Type: 
Working Paper
Appears in Collections:

Files in This Item:
File
Size





Items in EconStor are protected by copyright, with all rights reserved, unless otherwise indicated.