**3.1 Description of data**

Corruption is not the only factor that affects economic growth [23–25]. Other control variables are also relevant [26]. According to theory and on the basis of arguments cited in the literature, we propose economic growth depends mainly on investment, inflation, and trade openness.

The study is based on a panel data set over the period 1987–2021 for 65 countries taken from the World Development Indicators (Growth rate, Foreign direct investment, Inflation & Trade). The ICRG index has been obtained from the Quality of Government Institute, the Transparency International and International Country Risk Guide published by Political Risk Services group. It measures the risk involved in corruption rather than the perceived level of corruption.

The descriptive analysis for the full set of 65 countries appears in **Table 1**. It shows that average economic growth is 3.63% with an average corruption index of 3.35. Where:

Growth: Annual growth rate of GDP per capita.

Fdi: Percent of Foreign direct investment per GDP.

Inf: Consumer price index inflation (annual %).

Trad: Exports plus imports as share of GDP.

Icrg: International Country Risk Guide index of corruption, scaled 0–6. Higher values indicate lower corruption.

These results do not specify the dependency relationship between growth and corruption. To further probe this dependency relationship, an econometric study of the relationship between growth and corruption is necessary.
