The role of institutions in cross-section income and panel data growth models: A deeper investigation on the weakness and proliferation of instruments

Flavio Vieira, Ronald MacDonald and Aderbal Damasceno

Journal of Comparative Economics, 2012, vol. 40, issue 1, 127-140

Abstract: This paper investigates the role of institutions in determining per capita income levels and growth. It contributes to the empirical literature by using different variables as proxies for institutions and by developing a deeper analysis of the issues arising from the use of weak and too many instruments in per capita income and growth regressions. The cross-section estimation suggests that institutions seem to matter, regardless if they are the only explanatory variable or are combined with geographical and integration variables, although most models suffer from the issue of weak instruments. The results from the growth models indicate that: there is mixed evidence on the role of institutions and such evidence is more likely to be associated with law and order and investment profile; government spending is an important policy variable; collapsing the number of instruments results in fewer significant coefficients for institutions.

Keywords: Institutions; Income levels and growth; Cross-section and panel data analysis; Weak instruments and instrument proliferation (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: C33 O43 O47 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2012
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (15)

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0147596711000564
Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only

Related works:
Working Paper: The Role of Institutions in Cross-Section Income and Panel Data Growth Models: A Deeper Investigation on the Weakness and Proliferation of Instruments (2010)
Working Paper: The role of institutions in cross-section income and panel data growth models: a deeper investigation on the weakness and proliferation of instruments (2010)
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:eee:jcecon:v:40:y:2012:i:1:p:127-140

DOI: 10.1016/j.jce.2011.09.004

Access Statistics for this article

Journal of Comparative Economics is currently edited by D. Berkowitz and G. Roland

More articles in Journal of Comparative Economics from Elsevier
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Catherine Liu ().