The Moderating Role of Education in The Corruption-Ease of Doing Business Nexus: Evidence from CEE Countries

Abstract

This paper aims to investigate the impact of education factors on the relationship between corruption and the Ease of doing business in Central and Eastern Europe. We employed a regression analysis using panel data from 20 CEE countries between 2010 and 2017. Our findings argue that the impact of the perceived levels of public sector corruption on the Ease of doing business score is accentuated when a society is characterized by a higher level of quality of education systems and management schools, a better collaboration university-industry in the field of research, and a higher quality of scientific research institutions.

Keywords:

• CEE countries
• corruption
• ease of doing business
• quality of business schools
• quality of education systems
• quality of scientific research institutions

JEL Classification:

• I23
• M10
• O52

Acknowledgements

We sincerely thank the anonymous reviewers and the editor who dedicated their time and expertise to a detailed evaluation of this manuscript.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Cristina Boța-Avram

Cristina Boța-Avram ([email protected]) is an Associate Professor, PhD at Babes-Bolyai University, Faculty of Economics and Business Administration, Department of Accounting. She holds PhD from Babes-Bolyai University from 2009 and habilitation degree in the field of Accounting from the University of West from 2018, Timisoara. With over 19 years of experience in academia, she has published as author and coauthor over 70 scientific articles, 4 books chapters and 3 books. Her research interests include governance, corruption, digitalization, audit, ethical behavior, sustainable business performance, and sustainability reporting assurance.