Conceptual and applied studies assessing the linkage between economic freedom and corruption expect that economic freedom boosts economic growth, improves income, and reduces levels of corruption. However, most of them have concentrated on developed and developing groups, while the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) countries have drawn much less attention. Empirical findings are most often conflicting. Moreover, previous studies performed rather simple frequentist techniques regressing one or some freedom indices on corruption that do not allow for grasping all the aspects of economic freedom as well as capturing variations across countries. The study aims to investigate the effects of ten components of economic freedom index on the level of corruption in ten ASEAN countries from 1999 to 2018. By applying a Bayesian hierarchical mixed-effects regression via a Monte Carlo technique combined with the Gibbs sampler, the obtained results suggest several findings as follows: (i) In view of probability, the predictors property rights, government integrity, tax burden, business freedom, labor freedom, and investment freedom have a strongly positive impact on the response perceived corruption index; (ii) Government spending, trade freedom, and financial freedom exert a strongly negative effect, while the influence of monetary freedom is ambiguous; and (iii) There is an existence of not only random intercepts but also random coefficients at the country level impacting the model outcome. The empirical outcome could be of major importance for more efficient corruption controlling in emerging countries, including ASEAN nations.

中文翻译：

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东盟国家重新审视经济自由对腐败的影响：贝叶斯分层混合效应分析

评估经济自由与腐败之间联系的概念和应用研究预期，经济自由可以促进经济增长，增加收入并降低腐败程度。但是，它们大多数集中在发达和发展中的团体上，而东南亚国家联盟（ASEAN）国家的关注却少得多。经验发现常常是矛盾的。此外，以前的研究使用了相当简单的常客技术，对一个或一些关于腐败的自由指数进行了回归，从而无法掌握经济自由的所有方面以及捕捉各国之间的差异。该研究旨在调查1999年至2018年期间，经济自由指数的十个组成部分对十个东盟国家的腐败程度的影响。i）考虑到可能性，预测变量的财产权，政府廉正，税收负担，商业自由，劳动自由和投资自由对回应的腐败指数产生了积极的影响；（ii）政府支出，贸易自由和金融自由产生强烈的负面影响，而货币自由的影响则模棱两可；（iii）不仅存在随机截距，而且在国家一级也存在影响模型结果的随机系数。实证结果对于包括东盟国家在内的新兴国家更有效地控制腐败可能具有重要意义。