CORRUPTION, RELIGION AND ECONOMIC PERFORMANCE IN OPEC COUNTRIES: AN ANALYSIS

The analysis of corruption in international business is a relatively new but an important phenomenon and for the last two decades many research works have attempted to capture the economic impact of the corruption in a country. None of such works has addressed the issue of corruption and religion together in the context of developing but resource rich economies. To fill this gap, this study examines the incidence of corruption and religion for economic performance for several OPEC countries. Statistical methodology relies on panel estimation and simultaneous panel estimation in addition to traditional ordinary leas squares errors regression models. Results show that economic performance (measured by Real Gross Domestic Product) responds positively to less corruption and the dominant religion, especially Islam, in our study. Needless to say, this study also suffers from limitations, regarding the measurement of corruption, limitation of data and possible exclusion of other explanatory variables in the model.