Effectiveness of the anti-corruption policies: Empirical analysis of United Nations Convention Against Corruption

Abstract

This study aims to measure and understand the changes in corruption that occurred due to United Nations Convention Against Corruption implementations to answer the effectiveness of the convention. The study explains the importance of corruption and gives a summary of UNCAC implementations. Event study is used to capture the adjustments in the quality of the governance. The study estimates the changes in all 128 countries and separately in continents which gives the idea of in which types of countries UNCAC is effective. The empirical study is made with four different regressions, using four different corruption measures. The dependent variables are corruption from WB, Bayesian Corruption Index (BCI), public sector corrupt exchanges, and judicial corruption. Considering 128 countries, except BCI, dependent variables imply a decrease in the year that policies were implemented. Overall result for all countries, the convention is deemed to be successful. The continent base estimations suggest some statistically significant decline in corruption, Sub-Saharan Africa and North Africa, and the Middle East. If the UN focuses on these continents for future conventions, it might reach better outcomes. The result in Asia indicates an improvement in corruption; the UN might provide assistance instead of including the Asian countries in the conventions.