  We report quantitative relations between corruption level and economic
factors, such as country wealth and foreign investment per capita, which are
characterized by a power law spanning multiple scales of wealth and investments
per capita. These relations hold for diverse countries, and also remain stable
over different time periods. We also observe a negative correlation between
level of corruption and long-term economic growth. We find similar results for
two independent indices of corruption, suggesting that the relation between
corruption and wealth does not depend on the specific measure of corruption.
The functional relations we report have implications when assessing the
relative level of corruption for two countries with comparable wealth, and for
quantifying the impact of corruption on economic growth and foreign
investments.
