Deep determinants of economic growth

Abstract

A survey of the recent literature on cross country development reveals that there is an agreement on the key role played by institutions in explaining variation in the level of income per capita. Rodrik et al. (NBER Working Paper No. w8119, February, 2002) goes further to argue the primacy of institutions over integration and geography in a level accounting framework. The robustness of this result is checked by changing the dependent variable from level to growth and find that the same holds true.

Acknowledgements

I am grateful to Prof. Steve Dowrick for his valuable suggestions and comments which have deeply influenced this work. I also thank Jocelyn Finley and Jane Golley for their help in compiling the data into Excel spreadsheet.