Economic Performance in a Cross-Section of U.S. Native American Economies

Voxi Heinrich S Amavilah ()

GE, Growth, Math methods from EconWPA

Abstract: Institutions either promote or constrain economic performance, but which parts of institutions advance or restrict performance, and why do economies sharing similar institutions sometimes perform differently? This paper is a modest attempt at addressing a small part of these questions. It applies a novel model that is capable of separating infrastructural and superstructural effects of institutions on aggregate and average income across 84 U.S. Native American economies (USNAEs). It finds that USNAEs have much in common with developing countries inasmuch as their aggregate and average incomes depend mainly on the accumulation of physical capital and exogenously-given labor. However, resources and resource productivity are necessary but insufficient determinants of income for institutional reasons. Because of the apparent scarcity of physical capital, infrastructures that aid human capital formation (schools, hospitals, and the like) are inadequate, so that even when the local superstructure is generally accepting of external technology, the impact of human capital on performance remains modest. Clearly infrastructural and superstructural aspects of institutions are competitive rather than complementary, which weakens the Nelson-Phelps channel for transmitting external technology into USNAEs. One obvious policy implication is to improve extant infrastructures; another is to align the competing forces. How best to go ahead is left to further investigations.

Keywords: infrastructure; superstructure; performance constraints; institutions; human capital; U.S. Native American economies (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: O15 O57 J15 J24 R30 R23 R38 F43 D24 C31 C51 C21 C53 P47 P47 P17 O51 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-geo
Date: 2004-05-10
Note: Type of Document - wpd; pages: 39. Comments will be appreciated.
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Persistent link: http://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:wpa:wuwpge:0405003

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