Mapping Informal Institutions – a Global Dataset

The crucial importance of institutions for economic and social development has become part of the conventional wisdom in economics. In recent years, economists have become particularly interested in the potential role of informal institutions but measuring them remains a serious challenge. This paper collects more than three dozen variables depicting various informal institutions, meaning institutions whose non-compliance is sanctioned by members of society, in up to 180 countries. It draws on individual and collective measures elicited through different approaches such as surveys and lab experiments, but also family types and language traits. The resulting dataset can be used in many ways. We apply correlation network analysis to showcase which variables are more adequate for which type of empirical application.