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Abstract
Corruption has plagued many developing countries. While the empirical literature establishes it as an impediment to general economic growth, its impact on measures of agricultural performance, such as agricultural Total Factor Productivity (TFP) growth and productivity, has received less attention. This study examines the relationship between corruption and agricultural TFP growth and agricultural production in low-income countries using a panel dataset from 1995 through 2015. To investigate this relationship, we use Transparency International’s Corruption Perception Indices, the World Bank’s ‘control of corruption’ estimates and other socioeconomic indicators, and USDA’s data on agricultural inputs and annual TFP indices. This study employs Ordinary Least Squares (OLS) regressions and uses robust or clustered standard errors to test the significance of the estimates after including country and year fixed effects. The findings reveal that corruption was insignificantly associated with agricultural production, while it showed a negative impact on agricultural TFP growth.