Democratic Resilience, Corruption and Shadow Economy: Replication Dataset

This dataset provides the country-year panel and replication materials used in the study “Economic Freedom, Corruption and Democratic Quality: The Institutional Role of the Shadow Economy”. The dataset combines indicators of democratic quality, economic freedom, perceived corruption, shadow economy size, and macro-institutional controls for the period 2000-2017.

The main dependent variable is democratic quality, based on V-Dem indicators. Economic freedom is based on the Fraser Institute Economic Freedom of the World dataset. Corruption is operationalized primarily using the World Bank Worldwide Governance Indicators, with additional CPI-based measures for robustness. Shadow economy estimates are derived from Medina and Schneider’s 1991-2017 global database. The package includes the merged panel dataset, the high-income democracy analysis sample, codebook, README file, tables, figures, and reproduction scripts.

The purpose of the dataset is to support transparency, replication, and reuse of the empirical analysis. Users should cite both this Zenodo record and the original data providers listed in the README and codebook.