Institutions and Economic Performance: Endogeneity and Parameter Heterogeneity

The hallmark of the recent development and growth literature is a quest to identify institutions that explain a significant portion of the observed differences in living standards across countries. Empirical work in the area focuses almost exclusively on either the global sample or on developing nations. Certainly it is important to know which institutions are lacking in these developing countries, but the analysis provides little evidence for us to know to what extend a common set of institutions actually matters in advanced and developing countries. In this paper we examine parameter heterogeneity in prominent approaches to institutions and economic performance. We find that a new set of instruments is necessary to control for endogeneity, but that a common set of economically important institutions does indeed exist among advanced and developing nations. The impact of these institutions does vary substantially across samples; it is about three times as high in developing countries as compared to OECD countries

The Impact of Institutions on Economic Performance

This dissertation analyzes the importance of institutions for economic performance. The first two chapters assess the importance of institutions empirically, while the last one provides a dynamic model of institutional change. Chapter 1 analyzes the robustness of institutions in growth regressions by means of the Bayesian Model Averaging methodology to find that institutions and public health are important and robust determimants of economic growth. Chapter 2 assesses the importance of institutional variables for determining income per capita in OECD countries by means of introducing new instrumental variables. Given the paramount role of institutions for economic development established in the first two chapters and, more importantly, in prominent recent contributions to the literature, the last chapter tries to answers the question why countries trying to improve their institutional framework may fail

Institutions and Economic Performance: Endogeneity and Parameter Heterogeneity

The hallmark of the recent development and growth literature is the quest to identify institutions that explain significant portions of the observed differences in living standards. There are two drawbacks to the prominent approaches that focus either on the global sample, or on developing nations. First, it is unclear whether the identified institutions also hold explanatory power in advanced countries. Second, it is unclear whether the identified institutions matter to the same degree across all countries, or whether perhaps an altogether different set of institutions matters in advanced countries. To address these issues, we examine parameter heterogeneity in prominent approaches to institutions and economic performance. We find that parameter heterogeneity is so strong that it requires a new set of instruments to control for endogeneity. At the same time, however, we confirm that a common set of economically important institutions does exist among advanced and developing nations. The impact of these institutions is shown to vary substantially across subsamples; they are about three times important in developing countries as in OECD countries.

The Impact of Institutions on Economic Performance

This dissertation analyzes the importance of institutions for economic performance. The first two chapters assess the importance of institutions empirically, while the last one provides a dynamic model of institutional change. Chapter 1 analyzes the robustness of institutions in growth regressions by means of the Bayesian Model Averaging methodology to find that institutions and public health are important and robust determimants of economic growth. Chapter 2 assesses the importance of institutional variables for determining income per capita in OECD countries by means of introducing new instrumental variables. Given the paramount role of institutions for economic development established in the first two chapters and, more importantly, in prominent recent contributions to the literature, the last chapter tries to answers the question why countries trying to improve their institutional framework may fail.Institutions; growth regressions; Bayesian Model Averaging; Economic Development; OECD subsample; political and economic Institutions; formal and informal institutions; institutional change

Default Priors and Predictive Performance in Bayesian Model Averaging, with Application to Growth Determinants

Abstract Bayesian model averaging (BMA) has become widely accepted as a way of accounting for model uncertainty, notably in regression models for identifying the determinants of economic growth. To implement BMA the user must specify a prior distribution in two parts: a prior for the regression parameters and a prior over the model space. Here we address the issue of which default prior to use for BMA in linear regression. We compare 12 candidate parameter priors: the Unit Information Prior (UIP) corresponding to the BIC or Schwarz approximation to the integrated likelihood, a proper data-dependent prior, and 10 priors considered by Fernandez et al. (2001b). We also compare the uniform model prior to others that favor smaller models. We compare them on the basis of crossvalidated predictive performance on a well-known growth dataset and on two simulated examples from the literature. We found that the UIP with uniform model prior generally outperformed the other priors considered. It also identified the largest set of growth determinants. JEL Classification: O51, O52, O53