Do Institutions Cause Growth?

That is the title of a paper by Edward L. Glaeser, Rafael La Porta, Florencio Lopez-de-Silane and Andrei Shleifer. Click here to read more about it.

Here is the abstract and publication info.

"We revisit the debate over whether political institutions cause economic growth, or whether, alternatively, growth and human capital accumulation lead to institutional improvement. We find that most indicators of institutional quality used to establish the proposition that institutions cause growth are constructed to be conceptually unsuitable for that purpose. We also find that some of the instrumental variable techniques used in the literature are flawed. Basic OLS results, as well as a variety of additional evidence, suggest that a) human capital is a more basic source of growth than are the institutions, b) poor countries get out of poverty through good policies, often pursued by dictators, and c) subsequently improve their political institutions."

Published: Glaeser, Edward L., Rafael La Porta, Florencio Lopez-de-Silanes and Andrei Shleifer. "Do Institutions Cause Growth?," Journal of Economic Growth, 2004, v9(3,Sep), 271-303.