A contribution to the empirics of press freedom and corruption

We test the relationship between aggregate press freedom and corruption performing a modified extreme bounds analysis. We also test the relation among different forms of restrictions to press freedom using previously unexplored disaggregated data. Our results support the theoretical view that restrictions to press freedom leads to higher corruption. Furthermore, we obtain that both political and economic influences on the media are strongly and robustly related to corruption, while detrimental laws and regulations influencing the media are not. In all cases the evidence indicates, although not conclusively, that the direction of causation runs from a freer press to lower corruption.