Context Specificity of Economic Research: The Example of Corruption Research in Southeast Asia

Abstract

Area studies have focused their epistemological interest on one particular geographical area, however defined, and have often approached their objects of interest from various disciplinary or even interdisciplinary angles. Economics has contributed to area studies for a long time by providing area-specific analyses that combined sound economic reasoning with in-depth knowledge of the region. Area studies find their common ground in the area they study, not primarily in the issues studied within these areas or in the methodological approach they take. As a consequence, there is no Southeast Asia-specific economic methodology—the analytical tools in economics, whether theoretical or empirical, are not restricted to a particular geographic (or cultural, political, economic, social) area; they are applicable to the object of study regardless where it is placed.