Judicial corruption linked to exports
Comparing Judicial Corruption Score with Exports of goods, services and primary income (BoP, current US$), per capita across 158 countries, 2025–2025.
- Rank correlation
- +0.70
- Holding size constant
- +0.54
- Countries compared
- 158
- Period
- 2025–2025
What might link these
A possible link between judicial corruption and exports could be through the ease of doing business, as less corrupt judicial systems might facilitate international trade. However, a careful reader should be cautious about potential confounders like the overall institutional quality of a country. The relationship might also be influenced by factors like trade agreements and economic policies.
Why this is not proof of anything
This is a correlation across countries, not an experiment. It cannot show that either indicator causes the other, and both may simply follow a third thing. This correlation could mislead by suggesting a direct causal relationship between judicial corruption and exports, when in fact other factors like institutional quality or economic policies might be driving the observed link.
The second figure above repeats the measurement with national population and income held constant. It is the more conservative number: a relationship that largely disappears there was mostly telling you that larger, richer countries have more of most things.
How this was measured
Both indicators were ranked across every country reporting each, and the two rankings compared — ranks rather than raw values, because a handful of very large countries can otherwise manufacture a relationship on their own. The calculation is arithmetic over figures already published on this site; the commentary above is drafted from the two indicator names and the resulting coefficients.