The Quality of Goverment

Rafael La Porta, Florencio Lopez-de-Silanes (), Andrei Shleifer and Robert Vishny

No 6727, NBER Working Papers from National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc

Abstract: We investigate empirically the determinants of the quality of governments in a large cross-section of countries. We assess government performance using measures of government intervention, public sector efficiency, public good provision, size of government, and political freedom. We find that countries that are poor, close to the equator, ethnolinguistically heterogeneous, use French of socialist laws, or have high proportions of Catholics or Muslims exhibit inferior government performance. We also find that the larger governments tend to be the better performing ones. The importance of historical factors in explaining the variation in government performance across countries sheds light on the economic, political, and cultural theories of institutions.

JEL-codes: H11 N40 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 1998-09
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-cdm, nep-pbe, nep-pol and nep-pub
Note: PE
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Citations: View citations in EconPapers (12)

Published as Journal of Law, Economics, and Organization, Vol. 15, no. 1 (April 1999): 222-279

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Related works:
Journal Article: The Quality of Government (1999)
Working Paper: The quality of government (1999)
Working Paper: The Quality of Government (1998)
Working Paper: The Quality of Government
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