Corruption, competitiveness and illicit drugs market. A quantitative analysis

This work stems from a seemingly trivial observation that one of the researchers happened to make in the early 2000s: the two “rankings” published yearly by two highly credible, international, independent institutions (Transparency International and the World Economic Forum) respectively on the transparency and competitiveness of the countries, looked like two facets of the same reality, just slightly blurred. The top positions were always given to the same countries, in both charts and – more importantly – in the same order, with very few exceptions.

Thus emerged the idea of further investigation to find, if any, a statistical correlation between the two parameters.

The first attempts were made using the data of the years 2004-2005. Analyses were carried out at both global (world-wide) level and local (regional) level and the first results were very encouraging.

This work was then restarted some years later, following the international financial crisis of late 2000s, and – surprisingly – the correlation index proved to be even higher.

In addition, extending the investigation to the possible correlation between the transparency index and routes used by international organised crime for its illicit trafficking – in particular class A drugs – it has been possible to prove that an even higher correlation exists between the low value of the Transparency as measured yearly by Transparency International - i.e. the corruption of the Public Administrations - and the volume of this illicit International trafficking.

The lack of transparency, i.e. the corruption of Governments and public administrations favours organised crime in all its activities, which, in turn, undermines dramatically the competitiveness of a country in the International markets.