Economic Coordination, Political Regime and Sustainability Outcomes: Cross-National Evidence on Corruption, Inflation and Growth

Debates on market-led versus state-led economies often treat them as discrete types. We measure state coordination on a continuous 1–10 scale built from six components (ownership, administrative allocation, trade and capital controls, regulation and property rights, size of government, and political centralization) and relate it to Transparency International’s Corruption Perceptions Index (CPI), inflation, and real GDP per capita growth for 160 countries over 2016–2025. The central finding is the overlap between coordination and the political regime. One index point is associated with a CPI score lower by 6.6 points (Holm-adjusted p < 0.001), but the index correlates with liberal democracy at ρ = −0.90, and neither this association nor that of an economic coordination index without political components remains significant once democracy is controlled. The convex inflation hypothesis received nominal support before, but not after, multiplicity adjustment. In post hoc secondary tests, the economic coordination index has a positive linear association with inflation that persists when democracy is controlled and survives correction within this extended family. Associations with growth, differences within the European Union, and a tenure–inflation link are not robust. All results are associations, not causal effects, relevant to Sustainable Development Goal targets 16.5, 16.6, and 8.1.