Privatization and corruption: a systematic review of literature

Corruption is one of the main problems faced by governments and societies around the world, whose study has aroused significant academic interest in recent years and has been approached from various perspectives. This article analyzes the relationship between corruption and privatization, based on a systematic review of the scientific literature in the last decade. This paper intends to answer the questions: what is the state of the art in terms of the correlation between privatization and corruption? And what are the existing gaps in this field of study? For this, a bibliometric investigation on the subject was carried out in the period between 2008 and April 2019. Three hundred and eighteen articles were identified, of which 98 were analyzed because they were not repeated in the databases and were aligned with the purposes of the present study. The empirical results of the articles analyzed reveal that privatization is affected by corruption and it can generate more corruption practices in an environment where the level of corruption is high. This study has allowed us to identify a relevant gap regarding the analysis of the effects of corruption, verifying different results in the articles addressed according to the sector in which the investigation was carried out. Therefore, it is suggested to conduct studies taking into account the sector affected by privatization and the privatization method, as well as some contextual factors such as the quality of law enforcement and investor protection.