چکیده:
آزادی اقتصادی از جمله شاخص های تاثیر گذار بر متغیرهای مختلف اقتصادی است. شواهد، حاکی از آن است که این شاخص در کشورهای غنی از لحاظ منابع طبیعی (کشورهایی با بیشترین درآمد حاصل از فروش منابع طبیعی به صورت درصدی از تولید ناخالص طی 2017-2002)، دارای وضعیت مناسبی نیست. از آن جا که رانت جویی و فساد معمولاً از ویژگی های کشورهای دارای وفور منابع است، تحقیق حاضر، تلاشی در جهت یافتن پاسخ به این سؤال است که در این کشورها، فساد چه تأثیری بر شاخص آزادی اقتصادی دارد؟ علاوه بر این، آیا فساد می تواند بر نحوه اثرگذاری درآمد طبیعی بر شاخص آزادی اقتصادی، اثر بگذارد؟ بدین منظور با استفاده از داده های چهل و نه کشور منتخب طی دوره 2017-2002، به بررسی نحوه اثرگذاری درآمد طبیعی بر شاخص آزادی اقتصادی پرداخته شده است. در این تحقیق از شاخص ادراک فساد به عنوان متغیر آستانه در یک مدل پانل پویای آستانه ای استفاده شده است. نتابج به دست آمده حاکی از آن است که در صورتی که شاخص ادراک فساد، کمتر از 32 باشد، درآمد حاصل از فروش منابع طبیعی دارای تأثیر منفی بر آزادی اقتصادی است. این در حالی است که برای کشورهایی که دارای شاخص ادراک فساد بالاتر از سطح آستانه هستند(کشورهایی که سطح فساد کمتری دارند)، درآمد طبیعی نمی تواندتأثیر معناداری بر آزادی اقتصادی داشته باشد.
The Economic Freedom Index has been developed by the Heritage Foundation since 1995. Over the past 25 years, the global average score of this index has grown by 2.3, and many countries around the world have joined the group of free countries on average. The abundance of natural resources in many countries has become a curse of resources due to its weak institutional structure. The high revenues from the sale of resources have led to the formation of rent-seeking, corrupt and repressive governments. Evidence shows that economic freedom in these countries is not in good situation. In this regard, the present study was conducted to test the following two hypotheses:First, Corruption undermines economic freedom. Second, in addition to having a direct impact on economic freedom, corruption can also affect the impact of natural resource income on economic freedom. So that the impact of natural income on economic freedom is different at any levels of corruption. For this purpose, using the data of forty-nine selected countries with abundant resources during the period 2002-2017, the effect of corruption on the impact of natural income on the economic freedom of these countries has been studied. Algeria, Angola, Azerbaijan, Bolivia, Burkina Faso, Burundi, Central African Republic, Chad, Chile, Ecuador, Egypt, Tropical Guinea, Ethiopia, Gabon, Ghana, Guinea, Guinea-Bissau, Guyana, Iran, Kazakhstan, Kuwait, , Laotia , Malaysia, Mali, Mauritania, Mongolia, Mozambique, Niger, Nigeria, Norway, Oman, Peru, Qatar, Republic of the Congo, Russia, Saudi Arabia, Sierra Leone, Suriname, Togo, Trinidad and Tobago, Turkmenistan, Uganda, UAE, Uzbekistan, Venezuela, Yemen, Zambia, and Zimbabwe are the forty-nine countries that, on average, had the highest natural resource revenues as a percentage of GDP during 2002-2017.The data used in the present study are the economic freedom index, natural resources revenue as a percentage of GDP, the index of corruption perception and the index of political stability. Regarding the Corruption Perceptions Index, it should be added that this index shows corruption in the public sector of one country compared to other countries and is ranked between 0 and 100. The higher the rank of a country, the less corruption there is in that country.Samti et al. (2006), Graeff and Mehlkop (2003), Jichi and Cabro (2019) and Alsarhan (2019) have also shown that economic freedom effects on corruption. Therefore, due to the possibility of endogenous problems in the model, the framework of dynamic panel model is used. However, in some cases, the regression function may not be the same for the whole observation, and the regression can be divided into different parts based on a certain value of the threshold. In this regard, Hansen (1999) has proposed a threshold non-dynamic panel model. But in this model, the endogenous bias between the dependent and independent variables is not considered. In order to consider endogenousness, Caner and Hansen (2004) developed Hansen (1999) model by adding endogenous variables and exogenous threshold variables. But the model proposed by these researchers also cannot be used for dynamic panels. Finally, a model that can be used in a dynamic panel model is introduced by Kremer et al. (2013).The results of the study show that corruption has a negative impact on economic freedom. This result is consistent with the results of studies by Emerson (2006), Apergis et al. (2012), Yamarik and Redmon (2017) and Jichi, and Cabro (2019). In addition, the second hypothesis of the research is also confirmed; The results show that if the corruption perception index is less than 32, the income from the sale of natural resources has a negative impact on economic freedom. However, for countries with a corruption perception index above the threshold (countries with a lower level of corruption), natural income cannot have a significant effect on economic freedom. Countries with abundant resources have a very favorable ground for the formation of corruption and rent-seeking activities. As stated in the PAC model, corruption can affect individual components of the Index of Economic Freedom and weaken this key indicator as a whole. On the other hand, the existence of large revenues from the sale of natural resources provides the ground for the implementation of inefficient economic policies, price suppression and financial repression. The results of the present study suggest that if a resource-rich country has corruption above the threshold, natural income will be spent on repressive economic policies and will reduce economic freedom. But if the level of corruption is controlled to some extent, the negative and positive effects of the abundance of resources on economic freedom will neutralize each other, and in general, the effect of natural income on economic freedom will be insignificant. Overall, the results indicate that the improvement of the weak economic freedom of selected countries with abundant resources depends on the improvement of corruption in these countries. However, many of these countries have a long way to go to reach the threshold level of the Corruption Perceptions Index. Thus, the policy recommendation for these countries is to strengthen the regulatory components, both on the activities of the government and those who have a key role in the resource management system, to provide the basis for accountability of these actors and thus, the formation of corruption Restricted.