From Jasper Taylor
Daniele Paserman advises the governments of developing countries to maintain closed economies while increasing their wealth (11 October, p 14). I would like to question both his analysis and the paradigm within which he makes it.
He claims that there is a stronger correlation between wealth (measured as GDP per capita) and corruption in “open” countries than “closed” ones. But I note that the range of wealth values in the closed set is much smaller than in the open set, and it appears from the graphic that if he analysed the open subset with the corresponding wealth range he would probably find the same low correlation.
Edinburgh, UK
