Unbundling Institutions
66 Pages Posted: 28 Dec 2004
There are 3 versions of this paper
Unbundling Institutions
Unbundling Institutions
Unbundling Institutions
Date Written: July 2003
Abstract
This paper evaluates the importance of "property rights institutions," which protect citizens against expropriation by the government and powerful elites, and "contracting institutions," which enable private contracts between citizens. We exploit exogenous variation in both types of institutions driven by colonial history, and document strong first-stage relationships between property rights institutions and the determinants of European colonization strategy (settler mortality and population density before colonization), and between contracting institutions and the identity of the colonizing power. Using this instrumental variables approach, we find that property rights institutions have a first-order effect on long-run economic growth, investment, and financial development. Contracting institutions appear to matter only for the form of financial intermediation. A possible explanation for this pattern is that individuals often find ways of altering the terms of their formal and informal contracts to avoid the adverse effects of contracting institutions, but are unable to do so against the risk of expropriation.
Keywords: Contracts, Economic Growth, Financial Development, Institutions, Law and Finance, Legal Formalism, Legal Origin, Political Economy, Politics, Property Rights
JEL Classification: E44, G18, K00, N20, P16, P17
Suggested Citation: Suggested Citation
Do you have negative results from your research you’d like to share?
Recommended Papers
-
The Colonial Origins of Comparative Development: An Empirical Investigation
By Daron Acemoglu, Simon Johnson, ...
-
The Colonial Origins of Comparative Development: An Empirical Investigation
By Daron Acemoglu, Simon Johnson, ...
-
The Colonial Origins of Comparative Development: An Empirical Investigation
By Daron Acemoglu, Simon Johnson, ...
-
By Daron Acemoglu, Simon Johnson, ...
-
By Daron Acemoglu, Simon Johnson, ...
-
By Dani Rodrik, Arvind Subramanian, ...
-
By Dani Rodrik, Arvind Subramanian, ...
-
By Dani Rodrik, Arvind Subramanian, ...
-
Geography and Economic Development
By John Luke Gallup, Jeffrey D. Sachs, ...