Accounting and corruption: a cross‐country analysis

<jats:sec><jats:title content-type="abstract-heading">Purpose</jats:title><jats:p>The purpose of this paper is to better understand the relationship between accounting and auditing quality and the perceived level of corruption.</jats:p></jats:sec><jats:sec><jats:title content-type="abstract-heading">Design/methodology/approach</jats:title><jats:p>This relationship is studied by performing a cross‐country analysis using public data to measure accounting quality, audit quality, and corruption.</jats:p></jats:sec><jats:sec><jats:title content-type="abstract-heading">Findings</jats:title><jats:p>Consistent with the authors' predictions, the paper finds evidence that accounting and auditing quality are significantly related to the level of perceived corruption in a country.</jats:p></jats:sec><jats:sec><jats:title content-type="abstract-heading">Research limitations/implications</jats:title><jats:p>These findings suggest that countries with more transparent reporting have lower levels of perceived corruption and that the level of perceived corruption may be reduced in a country by improving accounting and auditing quality.</jats:p></jats:sec><jats:sec><jats:title content-type="abstract-heading">Practical implications</jats:title><jats:p>The findings suggest that countries can reduce the level of perceived corruption by improving the transparency of financial reporting by improving accounting and auditing standards.</jats:p></jats:sec><jats:sec><jats:title content-type="abstract-heading">Originality/value</jats:title><jats:p>While significant amounts of research has examined perceived corruption, this study is the first to address the impact of high‐quality accounting information on the level of perceived corruption.</jats:p></jats:sec>