The Primacy of Institutions Reconsidered: The Effects of Malaria Prevalence in the Empirics of Development

I reconsider the primacy of institutions over geography as an explanatory factor of cross-country differences in economic performance, which has recently been postulated by Acemoglu et al. (2001) and others. My estimates show that the reported missing direct performance effects of a measure of geography such as malaria prevalence are not robust to alternative specifications and samples. Unbiased estimates of the relative performance effects of institutions and malaria prevalence are difficult to obtain due to a lack of independent instrumental variables. Conditional on a restricted effect of institutions, my estimates suggest that malaria prevalence exhibits a large negative direct impact on economic performance, as postulated by Sachs (2003) and others

Diffusion of regulatory impact analysis among OECD and EU member states

With the exception of few comparative case studies, the literature on regulatory reform and regulatory impact analysis (RIA) tends to focus on internal political actors, activities, and processes. Furthermore, empirical analyses of new public management have overlooked the dynamics of communications among networks of administrative reformers. This article fills these gaps, presenting results of an event history analysis on the diffusion of RIA. It probes rationales for the origin of RIA and administrative capacity explanations in combination with variables referring to international and transnational communication channels of administrative reforms. A hypothesis based on legal origin is also tested. The findings show that the decision to adopt RIA rests on transnational networks as well as administrative variables such as government expenditure and legal origin