The Impact of Anti-Corruption Policies on the Profitability and Growth of Firms Listed in the Stock Market: Application on Singapore with a Panel Data Analysis

The study measures the impact of anti-corruption policies on the profitability and growth of firms listed in the Singapore Stock Exchange (SGX). It is the first paper that investigates the impact of macro and micro economics variable together. The study uses panel data regression to examine the effect of corruption on firm profitability and growth in 392 listed firms in Singapore Stock Exchange for the period from 1995 to 2014. We used 2 models; in the first model we measure the relation between corruption and profitability measured by net profit margin. In this model we run 2 sub- models; in the first one we added only micro-variables to corruption and in the second we incorporated macro-and micro-variables together. Moreover, in the second model we measure the relation between corruption and company growth measured by total asset growth. In this model we run 2 sub- models; in the first one we added only micro-variables to corruption and in the second we incorporated macro- and micro- variables together. All data are coming from DataStream database except the corruption index which comes from the transparency international index (CPI) The main conclusion of this study is that anti-corruption policies that was conducted in Singapore over the period from 1995 to 2014 resulted in better firm performance measured by net profit margin (1-point index improvement increases net profit margin by about 12.8%) and asset growth (1-point index improvement increases total asset growth by about 11.7%). Since this result might not be generalized in all countries with different level of growth, further research is suggested to investigate the factors that differentiate the anti-corruption policy effect among different countries including national culture that may impacts the fanatical system.