Constitutions and Economic Development: Evidence from the American Indian Nations

Randall Akee, Miriam Jorgensen () and Uwe Sunde
Additional contact information
Miriam Jorgensen: University of Arizona

No 6754, IZA Discussion Papers from Institute of Labor Economics (IZA)

Abstract: This paper presents an empirical examination of economic and institutional development. Utilizing a novel data set on American Indian tribal nations, we investigate how constitutional design affects economic development, while holding the broader legal and political environment fixed. Instrumental variables regressions, using the party of the US President at the time of the initial adoption of tribal constitutions as an instrument for constitutional design, indicate that parliamentary systems (versus presidential) have a strong positive effect on economic development, while ordinary least squares regressions of current economic outcomes on parliamentary systems of government show no effects. Robustness checks suggest that the results are not explained by differences in other institutions or geographic characteristics. Additional results provide some suggestive evidence that the effects may operate through channels that are typically associated with parliamentary systems, such as larger public employment, and more equitable income distribution.

Keywords: economic development; constitutional design; political economy (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: D72 N12 O11 O43 P16 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 38 pages
Date: 2012-07
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-pol
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (5)

Published - revised version published as 'Critical junctures and economic development – Evidence from the adoption of constitutions among American Indian Nations' in: Journal of Comparative Economics, 2015, 43 (4), 844 - 861

Downloads: (external link)
https://docs.iza.org/dp6754.pdf (application/pdf)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:iza:izadps:dp6754

Ordering information: This working paper can be ordered from
IZA, Margard Ody, P.O. Box 7240, D-53072 Bonn, Germany

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in IZA Discussion Papers from Institute of Labor Economics (IZA) IZA, P.O. Box 7240, D-53072 Bonn, Germany. Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Holger Hinte ().