Best Global Indicators of Corruption

Corruption Indicators

Corruption is difficult to measure as it is an inherently illicit activity, yet it is important for businesses and governments to understand its extent. Both those who are receiving and paying bribes often have an incentive to hide the fact that a bribe is being paid. Additionally, there are a range of activities which may not meet a legal definition of corruption in a particular country, but still could be categorized as using public office for private gain. Cultural acceptance of practices which might be considered corrupt in other country contexts (should you offer food and drink to a police officer that visits your home? One that stops you on the street?) also makes the concept difficult to define.

Another challenge is that there are a broad scope of activities which constitute corruption, ranging from a customs official accepting a small "fee" to skip the line to a Prime Minister accepting millions from a company to give them a tax break. Capturing both "petty" and "grand" corruption in a single measure can prove challenging as there are often different people who know the extent of each (the general population is aware of the depth of petty corruption, and so might be well captured with a household survey, while businesses and politicians are more aware of the scope of grand corruption in a country, requiring a different survey instrument.

Measuring corruption is also complicated by the difficulty with what exactly is being measured. Given that most corruption is never prosecuted, counting actual instances of bribery is very challenging. Even capturing the number of cases of grand corruption prosecuted has its issues as this can just as easily be the result of the politicization of an anti-corruption agency against an opposition party if all of the cases are brought against the party out of power. Additionally legal frameworks or anti-corruption agencies often have wide ranging de facto effectiveness, even with the same de jure legal structure, so there is no clear legal roadmap for eliminating corruption in a country.

However, despite these challenges, the level of corruption in a country is crucial for businesses and multilateral institutions to understand the true cost of doing business in a country, the risks associated with working in a country, and the needs for governance reform. The following indices measure varying components of corruption.

1. Worldwide Governance Indicators | Control of Corruption

One of the top indicators of global corruption, the Worldwide Governance indicators from the World Bank (or WGIs) measure six different aspects of good governance in countries around the world. This is an aggregate index using the unobserved components model, which makes it somewhat challenging to reproduce, however the World Bank has started publishing replication files that make this easier. The sub-sources are divided into those that cover all countries and those that cover only some countries, but the unobserved components model allows for all to be aggregated together. This is a good index if you are interested in something which captures a wide range of concepts and countries, but which has a somewhat complicated methodology.

The Control of Corruption index from the WGIs captures a wide range of concepts related to corruption perceptions (including petty and grand corruption, public surveys, business surveys, and expert analyses).

• Update Frequency: Annually, usually in September (this year's update was delayed due to methodology changes). Sub-sources update irregularly, and given that this is an aggregate, it can increase data lag.

• Country Coverage: 194 Countries (76 LIC/LMIC) in 2025

• Data Gathering Methodology: Mix of perception surveys, business risk surveys, and expert analyses

• Concepts Covered: Perceptions of grand corruption and petty corruption. Incidence of bribery and prosecution of corrupt officials.

• Further Disaggregation: Can be disaggregated by the individual sub-sources, though note that the weight of each sub-source is determined by the underlying unobserved components model.

• Ranking and Aggregation: Countries are given both absolute scores (0 to 100) and relative scores (-2.5 to 2.5). They are also given standard errors based on the number of sources and the unobserved components model.

2. Transparency International | Corruption Perceptions Index

Transparency International produces two related datasets on corruption. The Global Corruption Barometer, which is a primary dataset collecting perceptions of individuals on corruption and the Corruption Perceptions Index which is an aggregate of underlying primary data sources. The Global Corruption Barometer is infrequently updated and usually only covers one region of the world at a time, so we will focus on the Corruption Perceptions Index (CPI). The CPI is doing something similar to the WGI's Control of Corruption, it is aggregating up a range of other sources of data on corruption into a single index. The main differences are: that CPI uses only 13 data sources, while the WGIs use 24 sources (many of which are non-representative) and the methods of aggregation are much simpler and easier to replicate than the WGI's unobserved components model. These indices are, however, highly correlated and results will vary minimally from one to the other. CPI also has slightly lower country coverage than the WGIs do.

• Update Frequency: Annually, usually in February or March. Sub-sources update irregularly, and given that this is an aggregate, it can increase data lag.

• Country Coverage: 180 Countries (74 LIC/LMIC) in 2025

• Data Gathering Methodology: Mix of perception surveys, business risk surveys, and expert analyses

• Concepts Covered: Perceptions of bribery, diversion of public funds, use of public officer for private gain, nepotism in the civil service, and state capture.

• Further Disaggregation: Can be disaggregated by the individual sub-sources.

• Ranking and Aggregation: Countries are given absolute scores and a global rank. The absolute scores are comparable year over year.

3. Varieties of Democracy | Political Corruption Index

The Varieties of Democracy (V-Dem) dataset is a wide ranging dataset that includes information on many crucial components of good governance, democracy, civil liberties, and much more. Data are gathered from an annual survey of over 4,000 experts around the world and normalized to a consistent scale. The produce over 500 indicators and hundreds of composite indices on a wide range of topics.

Included in this dataset is an index focused on corruption called the Political corruption index (v2x_corr). It is an aggregate of two underlying sub-indices and two indicators:

1. Executive Corruption Index: Covers two questions: How routinely do members of the executive, or their agents grant favors in exchange for bribes, kickbacks, or other material inducements, and how often do they steal, embezzle, or misappropriate public funds or other state resources for personal or family use? (v2x_execorr)

2. Public Sector Corruption Index: Covers two questions: To what extent do public sector employees grant favors in exchange for bribes, kickbacks, or other material inducements, and how often do they steal, embezzle, or misappropriate public funds or other state resources for personal or family use? (v2x_pubcorr)

3. Judicial Corrupt Decision Indicator: How often do individuals or businesses make undocumented extra payments or bribes in order to speed up or delay the process or to obtain a favorable judicial decision? (v2jucorrdc)

4. Legislative Corrupt Activities Indicator: Do members of the legislature abuse their position for financial gain? (v2lgcrrpt)

Because of their normalization process there are several different versions of these data, the model outputs values ranging from -5 to 5 (no suffix), but these are also transformed into a version on the original scale for the questions: generally 0 to 4 (_osp suffix), and an ordinal version which takes the most likely whole number value 0, 1, 2, 3, or 4 and reports that (_ord suffix). For more information on this, take a look at their codebook. Micheal Coppedge is a good point of contact for these indicators.

• Update Frequency: Annually in March.

• Country Coverage: 173 Countries (74 LIC/LMIC) in 2025

• Data Gathering Methodology: Expert Survey

• Concepts Covered: Corruption perceptions of the executive, judiciary, legislature and public service.

• Further Disaggregation: Can be branch of government.

• Ranking and Aggregation: Several different estimates available, including the original model estimate, the original scale and whole numbers on an ordinal scale as described above.

4. World Justice Project | Rule of Law Index | Absence of Corruption

The World Justice Project (WJP) has a widely respected Rule of Law index. This is created using both expert questionairres and household surveys. These are aggregated into 8 different factors (Constraints on Government Powers, Absence of Corruption, Open Government, Fundamental Rights, Order and Security, Regulatory Enforcement, Civil Justice, and Criminal Justice) each with several sub indicators. Countries get a score for each of the factors, sub-indicators, and overall rule of law. The index is updated annually and has good data, but has lower country coverage than many similar indices so may not be useful for someone needing complete country coverage.

The Absence of Corruption factor measures government corruption, with four sub indicators measuring corruption in the executive, corruption in the judiciary, corruption in the legislature, and corruption in the military/police.

• Update Frequency: Annually, usually in October.

• Country Coverage: 142 Countries (52 LIC/LMIC) in 2025

• Data Gathering Methodology: Mix of household surveys and expert analyses.

• Concepts Covered: Perceptions of corruption in the executive, the judiciary, the legislature, and the police/military.

• Further Disaggregation: Can be disaggregated by the difference branches of government.

• Ranking and Aggregation: Countries are given absolute scores and a global rank.

5. World Bank | Country Policy and Institutional Assessment | Transparency, Accountability, and Corruption in the Public Sector

The World Bank provides concessional financing through the International Development Association (IDA) based on country need and country policy performance. Countries with better policies receive better financing. The Country Policy and Institutional Assessment (CPIA) is how the World Bank assesses the quality of policies and governance in a country for the purpose of allocating funds. Indicators are grouped into four general categories (Economic Management, Structural Policies, Policies for Social Inclusion/Equity, and Public Sector Management and Institutions). Each of these categories have 3-5 sub indicators which are scored on a scale of 1-6 through expert analysis by the World Bank. The country coverage is low (focused on LICs and LMICs), but often this source covers countries that other sources fail to cover, so can be useful to include in an index.

The Transparency, Accountability and Corruption in the Public sector sub-indicator is a part of the Public Sector Management and Institutions sub-component. It measures "the extent to which the executive can be held accountable for its use of funds and for the results of its actions by the electorate and by the legislature and judiciary, and the extent to which public employees within the executive are required to account for administrative decisions, use of resources, and results obtained."

• Update Frequency: Annually, usually in July.

• Country Coverage: 77 Countries (62 LIC/LMIC) in 2025

• Data Gathering Methodology: Expert Analysis

• Concepts Covered: Accountability of the Executive and Public Employees, transparency to civil society of the government, and capture of the state by narrow interests.

• Further Disaggregation: None

• Ranking and Aggregation: Scores are aggregated up to overall CPIA scores for a country.