Institutions Rule: The Primacy of Institutions over Geography and Integration in Economic Development

摘要: We estimate the respective contributions of institutions, geography, and trade in determining income levels around world, using recently developed instrumental variables for institutions trade. Our results indicate that quality “trumps” everything else. Once are controlled for, conventional measures geography have at best weak direct effects on incomes, although they a strong indirect effect by influencing institutions. Similarly, once is almost always insignificant, often enters equation with “wrong” (i.e., negative) sign. relate our to recent literature, where differences exist, trace their origins choices samples, specification, instrumentation.