Note: On Facebook, Carmi Turchick offered these interesting references:

Graef, P., & Mehlkop, G. (2002). The impact of economic freedom on corruption: different patterns for rich and poor countries. European Journal of Political Economy, 19, 605-620

Kotera, G., Okada, K., & Samreth, S. (2012). Government size, democracy, and corruption: An empirical investigation. Economic Modelling, 29(6), 2340-2348.

A number of papers show the expected negative effects of increased corruption on growth and these papers show that lower levels of regulation in well developed economies corresponds with higher levels of corruption. This is not the same in developing economies, there more regulation corresponds with more corruption, the regulations are excuses for bribery.