Interplay between competitiveness, quality of life and corruption: Empirical evidence from Europe
Keywords:
Competitiveness, corruption, happiness index, quality of lifeAbstract
National competitiveness and citizens' happiness are important goals for political leaders. Thus, the need to create and implement systems and processes is arises to ensure public policies, thereby contributing to the sustainable development of a country or community. Globally, despite attempts to achieve satisfactory results on improving living standards, arise obstacles that may alter the finality of the desired results. This paper examines, first of all, the influence of one of the most significant such obstacles, corruption, by examining its relationship with competitiveness. A second direction of analysis is focused on studying how the effects of happiness contribute to the development of national competitiveness. Specifically, the analyses performed on corruption and happiness include various indicators of a political and social nature, being achieved at European Union level and on geographical clusters. The article highlights the importance of the influence of the role of corruption in economic and social life with a strong impact on competitiveness and the level of happiness shown. Corruption, as a mode of action of public institutions, will influence and affect economic results, resulting in the decline of national competitiveness.
The analysis of competitiveness data is based on the Global Competitiveness Report for the period 2015-2019, the data on the perception of corruption come from the analysis of the Corruption Perception Index and the data on the global happiness from the Global Happiness Report for the same periods. The results show that most of the case, the nations with a low degree of corruption are the most competitive, at the same time showing a high level of happiness of the population.
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