Economic Freedom, Corruption, and Species Imperilment: A Cross-Country Analysis

We weave together two strands of the scientific literature: we have been presented with the proposition that economic freedom and corruption are linked to economic prosperity and with the proposition that economic prosperity is related to environmental degradation. The question we explore empirically is whether economic freedom and corruption are linked, albeit perhaps indirectly through economic prosperity, to environmental degradation. Using data from 152 countries, we estimate models of factors that influence species imperilment and, controlling for cross-border effects, find evidence across several taxa groups of a statistically significant relationship between economic freedom and species imperilment. However, we find consistent evidence of a similar relationship between corruption and species imperilment for only one taxa group.