Introduction: Corruption is a challenging problem all over the world, especially in developing countries. In the modern industrial world, the production of more wealth, has increased incentives for corruption, expanding the areas where it occurs. In Iran, corruption has also spread and become an important social problem in recent decades due to the acceleration of the process of modernization of society. Although, in Iran, many efforts have been made to fight corruption and numerous laws have been passed, this phenomenon has become more prevalent, especially in recent years. Without a doubt, the continuation of this situation will have detrimental consequences. The present study has attempted to examine corruption in Iran based on economic and social development indicators in a long-term period.
Method: This study is a quantitative and longitudinal research that was conducted using a time series method. In this study, the relationship between economic indicators including unemployment and inflation, as well as social indicators such as political/civil freedoms and the internet penetration, with corruption in the period 2003 to 2024 was analyzed. The required data were collected from Transparency International, the World Bank, and Freedom House. To examine the short-term and long-term relationship between the variables, an autoregressive distributional lag (ARDL) model in Microfit software was employed.
Findings: According to the research findings, the corruption has been on the rise during the period 2003 to 2024 indicating that corruption is still an acute social problem in Iran. In addition, the research findings show that in the long term, there is a significant relationship between the economic indicators of unemployment and inflation and the social indicator of political/civil freedom with corruption, during which the level of corruption has increased with the increase in unemployment and inflation. Nevertheless, in the same period, the level of corruption has decreased with the increase in the internet penetration coefficient and political/civil freedoms.
Conclusion: Corruption as an important social problem has many harmful consequences on the one hand and is affected by a wide range of factors on the other hand. This study, focusing on the macro level and a long period, has clearly demonstrated that corruption has a close and complex connection with some indicators of economic and social development. Corruption has increased with rising inflation and unemployment, and has decreased with increasing internet penetration and political/civil freedoms. This research concludes that corruption in Iran is a complex and multi-layered phenomenon.