We estimate the respective contributions of institutions, geography, and trade in determining income levels around the world, using recently developed instruments for institutions and trade. Our results indicate that the quality of institutions 'trumps' everything else. Once institutions are controlled for, measures of geography have at best weak direct effects on incomes, although they have a strong indirect effect by influencing the quality of institutions. Similarly, once institutions are controlled for, trade is almost always insignificant, and often enters the income equation with the 'wrong' (i.e. negative) sign, although trade too has a positive effect on institutional quality. We relate our results to recent literature, and where differences exist, trace their origins to choices on samples, specification, and instrumentation.
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Paper provided by C.E.P.R. Discussion Papers in its series CEPR Discussion Papers with number
3643.
References listed on IDEAS Please report citation or reference errors to , or , if you are the registered author of the cited work, log in to your RePEc Author Service profile, click on "citations" and make appropriate adjustments.:
Rafael La Porta & Florencio Lopez-de-Silane & Andrei Shleifer & Robert Vishny, 1998.
"The Quality of Goverment,"
NBER Working Papers
6727, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
[Downloadable!] (restricted)
Francisco Alcalá & Antonio Ciccone, 2001.
"Trade and Productivity,"
Economics Working Papers
580, Department of Economics and Business, Universitat Pompeu Fabra, revised Jul 2002.
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