Institutional Collapse and the Limits of Corporate Governance: Evidence from Haiti and Implications for Fragile States

To empirically assess the institutional foundations of corporate governance in fragile states, this study draws on three primary datasets: the Corruption Perceptions Index (CPI), the Worldwide Governance Indicators (WGI), and the World Bank Doing Business Rankings. The CPI dataset, published annually by Transparency International, offers historical data on perceived levels of public sector corruption across 180 countries. Key variables include CPI score, global rank, standard error, number of sources, and confidence intervals—making it a widely accepted proxy for measuring institutional integrity and regulatory trust. The WGI dataset, developed by the World Bank, provides standardized estimates of governance performance, with particular emphasis in this study on the Control of Corruption (CC) indicator. Each WGI entry includes an annual governance score, standard deviation, percentile rank, and confidence intervals, enabling longitudinal and cross-country comparisons of institutional quality. Finally, the Doing Business 2020 dataset presents detailed rankings on business environment performance, encompassing key dimensions such as starting a business, registering property, getting credit, protecting minority investors, enforcing contracts, and resolving insolvency. These indicators collectively measure procedural efficiency and legal infrastructure—core components of a functioning corporate governance system. Together, these datasets offer a comprehensive foundation for evaluating how institutional voids in fragile states like Haiti constrain effective governance and impede private sector development.