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INSTITUTIONS AS THE FUNDAMENTAL CAUSE OF LONG-RUN
GROWTH*
DARON ACEMOGLU†, SIMON JOHNSON‡^ AND JAMES ROBINSON§
Abstract
This paper develops the empirical and theoretical case that differences in economic institutions are the fundamental cause of differences in economic development. We first document the empirical importance of institutions by focusing on two “quasi-natural experiments” in history, the division of Korea into two parts with very different economic institutions and the colonization of much of the world by European powers starting in the fifteenth century. We then develop the basic outline of a framework for thinking about why economic institutions differ across countries. Economic institutions determine the incentives of and the constraints on economic actors, and shape economic outcomes. As such, they are social decisions, chosen for their consequences. Because different groups and individuals typically benefit from different economic institutions, there is generally a conflict over these social choices, ultimately resolved in favor of groups with greater political power. The distribution of political power in society is in turn determined by political institutions and the distribution of resources. Political institutions allocate de jure political power, while groups with greater economic might typically possess greater de facto political power. We therefore view the appropriate theoretical framework as a dynamic one with political institutions and the distribution of resources as the state variables. These variables themselves change over time because prevailing economic institutions affect the distribution of resources, and because groups with de facto political power today strive to change political institutions in order to increase their de jure political power in the future. Economic institutions encouraging economic growth emerge when political institutions allocate power to groups with interests in broad-based property rights enforcement, when they create effective constraints on power-holders, and when there are relatively few rents to be captured by power holders. We illustrate the assumptions, the workings and the implications of this framework using a number of historical examples.
Key words: development, growth, institutions, politics
Clasificación JEL: N11, N13, N15, N16, N17, O10, P10, P
- (^) Prepared for the Handbook of Economic Growth edited by Philippe Aghion and Steve Durlauf. We thank the editors for their patience and Leopoldo Fergusson, Pablo Querubín and Barry Weingast for their helpful suggestions †
‡ Department of Economics, MIT. Email:^ [email protected] § Sloan School of Management, MIT. Email:^ [email protected] Department of Economics, Berkeley. Email: [email protected]
DOCUMENTO CEDE 2004- 33
ISSN 1657-7191 (Edición Electrónica) SEPTIEMBRE DE 2004
CEDE
LAS INSTITUCIONES COMO CAUSA FUNDAMENTAL DEL
CRECIMIENTO EN EL LARGO PLAZO
Resumen
Este trabajo desarrolla el caso empírico y teórico que las diferencias en las instituciones económicas son la causa fundamental en las diferencias del desarrollo económico. En la primera sección, se documenta la importancia empírica de las instituciones haciendo énfasis en dos experimentos cuasi-naturales de la historia: la división de Corea en dos regiones con instituciones económicas muy diferentes y la colonización de una gran parte del mundo por los europeos desde el siglo XV. En la segunda sección se desarrolla el lineamiento básico de un marco de análisis para establecer porque las instituciones económicas difieren a través de los países. Las instituciones económicas determinan los incentivos y las restricciones sobre los actores económicos y los resultados de la economía; como tales son decisiones sociales escogidas por sus consecuencias. Debido a que diferentes grupos y/o individuos se benefician de las diferentes instituciones económicas, generalmente hay un conflicto sobre estas elecciones sociales que finalmente son resueltos a favor de grupos con el mayor poder político. La distribución del poder político en la sociedad es a su vez determinado por las instituciones políticas y la distribución de los recursos. Las instituciones políticas asignan el poder político de jure , mientras que los grupos con mayor poder económico pueden poseer mayor poder político de facto. En la tercera sección, se analiza un marco teórico apropiado como uno dinámico con las instituciones políticas y la distribución de los recursos como las variables de estado. Estas variables cambian en el tiempo porque las instituciones económicas que persisten en el tiempo afectan la distribución de los recursos y los grupos que tienen el poder político de facto intentan cambiar las instituciones políticas con el fin de aumentar su poder político de jure en el futuro. Las instituciones económicas que promueven el crecimiento económico emergen cuando: i) las instituciones políticas asignan poder a los grupos con interés de obtener unos derechos de propiedad bien definidos para la mayoría de sociedad; ii) se crean restricciones efectivas a quienes tienen el poder y iii) hay muy pocas rentas a ser capturados por quienes tienen el poder. Finalmente, se ilustra los supuestos, los resultados y las implicaciones bajo este enfoque usando ejemplos históricos.
Palabras clave: desarrollo, crecimiento, instituciones, política.
Clasificación JEL: N11, N13, N15, N16, N17, O10, P10, P
Abstract
This paper develops the empirical and theoretical case that differences in economic institutions are the fundamental cause of differences in economic development. We first document the empirical importance of institutions by focusing on two “quasi-natural ex- periments” in history, the division of Korea into two parts with very different economic institutions and the colonization of much of the world by European powers starting in the fifteenth century. We then develop the basic outline of a framework for thinking about why economic institutions differ across countries. Economic institutions determine the incentives of and the constraints on economic actors, and shape economic outcomes. As such, they are social decisions, chosen for their consequences. Because different groups and individuals typically benefit from different economic institutions, there is generally a conflict over these social choices, ultimately resolved in favor of groups with greater political power. The distribution of political power in society is in turn determined by political institutions and the distribution of resources. Political institutions allocate de jure political power, while groups with greater economic might typically possess greater de facto political power. We therefore view the appropriate theoretical framework as a dynamic one with political institutions and the distribution of resources as the state variables. These variables themselves change over time because prevailing economic in- stitutions affect the distribution of resources, and because groups with de facto political power today strive to change political institutions in order to increase their de jure po- litical power in the future. Economic institutions encouraging economic growth emerge when political institutions allocate power to groups with interests in broad-based prop- erty rights enforcement, when they create effective constraints on power-holders, and when there are relatively few rents to be captured by power-holders. We illustrate the assumptions, the workings and the implications of this framework using a number of historical examples.
1 Introduction
1.1 The question
The most trite yet crucial question in the field of economic growth and development is: Why are some countries much poorer than others? Traditional neoclassical growth models, following Solow (1956), Cass (1965) and Koopmans (1965), explain differences in income per capita in terms of different paths of factor accumulation. In these models, cross-country differences in factor accumulation are due either to differences in saving rates (Solow), preferences (Cass-Koopmans), or other exogenous parameters, such as total factor productivity growth. More recent incarnations of growth theory, following Romer (1986) and Lucas (1988), endogenize steady-state growth and technical progress, but their explanation for income differences is similar to that of the older theories. For instance, in the model of Romer (1990), a country may be more prosperous than an- other if it allocates more resources to innovation, but what determines this is essentially preferences and properties of the technology for creating ‘ideas’.^1 Though this theoretical tradition is still vibrant in economics and has provided many insights about the mechanics of economic growth, it has for a long time seemed unable to provide a fundamental explanation for economic growth. As North and Thomas (1973, p.
- put it: “the factors we have listed (innovation, economies of scale, education, capital accumulation etc.) are not causes of growth; they are growth” (italics in original). Factor accumulation and innovation are only proximate causes of growth. In North and Thomas’s view, the fundamental explanation of comparative growth is differences in institutions. What are institutions exactly? North (1990, p. 3) offers the following definition: “Institutions are the rules of the game in a society or, more formally, are the humanly devised constraints that shape human interaction.” He goes on to emphasize the key implications of institutions since, “In consequence they structure incentives in human exchange, whether political, social, or economic.” Of primary importance to economic outcomes are the economic institutions in soci- ety such as the structure of property rights and the presence and perfection of markets. Economic institutions are important because they influence the structure of economic (^1) Although some recent contributions to growth theory emphasize the importance of economic poli- cies, such as taxes, subsidies to research, barriers to technology adoption and human capital policy, they typically do not present an explanation for why there are differences in these policies across countries.
though cultural and geographical factors may also matter for economic performance, differences in economic institutions are the major source of cross-country differences in economic growth and prosperity. Economic institutions not only determine the aggre- gate economic growth potential of the economy, but also an array of economic outcomes, including the distribution of resources in the future (i.e., the distribution of wealth, of physical capital or human capital). In other words, they influence not only the size of the aggregate pie, but how this pie is divided among different groups and individuals in society. We summarize these ideas schematically as (where the subscript t refers to current period and t + 1 to the future):
economic institutionst =⇒
( economic performancet distribution of resourcest+^.
- Economic institutions are endogenous. They are determined as collective choices of the society, in large part for their economic consequences. However, there is no guarantee that all individuals and groups will prefer the same set of economic institutions because, as noted above, different economic institutions lead to different distributions of resources. Consequently, there will typically be a conflict of interest among various groups and individuals over the choice of economic institutions. So how are equilibrium economic institutions determined? If there are, for example, two groups with opposing preferences over the set of economic institutions, which group’s preferences will prevail? The answer depends on the political power of the two groups. Although the efficiency of one set of economic institutions compared with another may play a role in this choice, political power will be the ultimate arbiter. Whichever group has more political power is likely to secure the set of economic institutions that it prefers. This leads to the second building block of our framework:
political powert =⇒ economic institutionst
- Implicit in the notion that political power determines economic institutions is the idea that there are conflicting interests over the distribution of resources and therefore indirectly over the set of economic institutions. But why do the groups with conflicting interests not agree on the set of economic institutions that maximize aggregate growth (the size of the aggregate pie) and then use their political power simply to determine the distribution of the gains? Why does the exercise of political power lead to economic in- efficiencies and even poverty? We will explain that this is because there are commitment problems inherent in the use of political power. Individuals who have political power
cannot commit not to use it in their best interests, and this commitment problem cre- ates an inseparability between efficiency and distribution because credible compensating transfers and side-payments cannot be made to offset the distributional consequences of any particular set of economic institutions.
- The distribution of political power in society is also endogenous, however. In our framework, it is useful to distinguish between two components of political power, which we refer to as de jure (institutional) and de facto political power. Here de jure political power refers to power that originates from the political institutions in society. Political institutions, similarly to economic institutions, determine the constraints on and the incentives of the key actors, but this time in the political sphere. Examples of political institutions include the form of government, for example, democracy vs. dictatorship or autocracy, and the extent of constraints on politicians and political elites. For example, in a monarchy, political institutions allocate all de jure political power to the monarch, and place few constraints on its exercise. A constitutional monarchy, in contrast, corresponds to a set of political institutions that reallocates some of the political power of the monarch to a parliament, thus effectively constraining the political power of the monarch. This discussion therefore implies that:
political institutionst =⇒ de jure political powert
- There is more to political power than political institutions, however. A group of individuals, even if they are not allocated power by political institutions, for example as specified in the constitution, may nonetheless possess political power. Namely, they can revolt, use arms, hire mercenaries, co-opt the military, or use economically costly but largely peaceful protests in order to impose their wishes on society. We refer to this type of political power as de facto political power, which itself has two sources. First, it depends on the ability of the group in question to solve its collective action problem, i.e., to ensure that people act together, even when any individual may have an incentive to free ride. For example, peasants in the Middle Ages, who were given no political power by the constitution, could sometimes solve the collective action problem and undertake a revolt against the authorities. Second, the de facto power of a group depends on its economic resources, which determine both their ability to use (or misuse) existing political institutions and also their option to hire and use force against different groups. Since we do not yet have a satisfactory theory of when groups are able to solve their collective action problems, our focus will be on the second source of de facto political
framework is as follows:
political institutionst
distribution of resourcest
de jure political powert & de facto political powert
economic institutionst
political institutionst+
economic performancet & distribution of resourcest+
The two state variables are political institutions and the distribution of resources, and the knowledge of these two variables at time t is sufficient to determine all the other variables in the system. While political institutions determine the distribution of de jure political power in society, the distribution of resources influences the distribution of de facto political power at time t. These two sources of political power, in turn, affect the choice of economic institutions and influence the future evolution of political institutions. Economic institutions determine economic outcomes, including the aggregate growth rate of the economy and the distribution of resources at time t + 1. Although economic institutions are the essential factor shaping economic outcomes, they are themselves endogenous and determined by political institutions and distribution of resources in society. There are two sources of persistence in the behavior of the system: first, political institutions are durable, and typically, a sufficiently large change in the distribution of political power is necessary to cause a change in political institutions, such as a transition from dictatorship to democracy. Second, when a particular group is rich relative to others, this will increase its de facto political power and enable it to push for economic and political institutions favorable to its interests. This will tend to reproduce the initial relative wealth disparity in the future. Despite these tendencies for persistence, the framework also emphasizes the potential for change. In particular, “shocks”, including changes in technologies and the international environment, that modify the balance of (de facto) political power in society and can lead to major changes in political institutions and therefore in economic institutions and economic growth. A brief example might be useful to clarify these notions before commenting on some of the underlying assumptions and discussing comparative statics. Consider the devel- opment of property rights in Europe during the Middle Ages. There is no doubt that lack of property rights for landowners, merchants and proto- industrialists was detri- mental to economic growth during this epoch. Since political institutions at the time placed political power in the hands of kings and various types of hereditary monarchies,
such rights were largely decided by these monarchs. Unfortunately for economic growth, while monarchs had every incentive to protect their own property rights, they did not generally enforce the property rights of others. On the contrary, monarchs often used their powers to expropriate producers, impose arbitrary taxation, renege on their debts, and allocate the productive resources of society to their allies in return for economic benefits or political support. Consequently, economic institutions during the Middle Ages provided little incentive to invest in land, physical or human capital, or technol- ogy, and failed to foster economic growth. These economic institutions also ensured that the monarchs controlled a large fraction of the economic resources in society, solidifying their political power and ensuring the continuation of the political regime. The seventeenth century, however, witnessed major changes in the economic and political institutions that paved the way for the development of property rights and limits on monarchs’ power, especially in England after the Civil War of 1642 and the Glorious Revolution of 1688, and in the Netherlands after the Dutch Revolt against the Hapsburgs. How did these major institutional changes take place? In England, for example, until the sixteenth century the king also possessed a substantial amount of de facto political power, and leaving aside civil wars related to royal succession, no other social group could amass sufficient de facto political power to challenge the king. But changes in the English land market (Tawney, 1941) and the expansion of Atlantic trade in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries (Acemoglu, Johnson and Robinson, 2002b) gradually increased the economic fortunes, and consequently the de facto power of landowners and merchants. These groups were diverse, but contained important elements that perceived themselves as having interests in conflict with those of the king: while the English kings were interested in predating against society to increase their tax incomes, the gentry and merchants were interested in strengthening their property rights. By the seventeenth century, the growing prosperity of the merchants and the gentry, based both on internal and overseas, especially Atlantic, trade, enabled them to field military forces capable of defeating the king. This de facto power overcame the Stuart monarchs in the Civil War and Glorious Revolution, and led to a change in political institutions that stripped the king of much of his previous power over policy. These changes in the distribution of political power led to major changes in economic insti- tutions, strengthening the property rights of both land and capital owners and spurred a process of financial and commercial expansion. The consequence was rapid economic growth, culminating in the Industrial Revolution, and a very different distribution of
facto political power, this would not have been a problem. However, de facto political power is often transient, for example because the collective action problems that are solved to amass this power are likely to resurface in the future, or other groups, especially those controlling de jure power, can become stronger in the future. Therefore, any change in policies and economic institutions that relies purely on de facto political power is likely to be reversed in the future. In addition, many revolutions are followed by conflict within the revolutionaries. Recognizing this, the English gentry and merchants strove not just to change economic institutions in their favor following their victories against the Stuart monarchy, but also to alter political institutions and the future allocation of de jure power. Using political power to change political institutions then emerges as a useful strategy to make gains more durable. The framework that we propose, therefore, emphasizes the importance of political institutions, and changes in political institutions, as a way of manipulating future political power, and thus indirectly shaping future, as well as present, economic institutions and outcomes. This framework, though abstract and highly simple, enables us to provide some preliminary answers to our main question: why do some societies choose “good economic institutions”? At this point, we need to be more specific about what good economic institutions are. A danger we would like to avoid is that we define good economic institutions as those that generate economic growth, potentially leading to a tautology. This danger arises because a given set of economic institutions may be relatively good during some periods and bad during others. For example, a set of economic institutions that protects the property rights of a small elite might not be inimical to economic growth when all major investment opportunities are in the hands of this elite, but could be very harmful when investments and participation by other groups are important for economic growth (see Acemoglu, 2003b). To avoid such a tautology and to simplify and focus the discussion, throughout we think of good economic institutions as those that provide security of property rights and relatively equal access to economic resources to a broad cross-section of society. Although this definition is far from requiring equality of opportunity in society, it implies that societies where only a very small fraction of the population have well-enforced property rights do not have good economic institutions. Consequently, as we will see in some of the historical cases discussed below, a given set of economic institutions may have very different implications for economic growth depending on the technological possibilities and opportunities. Given this definition of good economic institutions as providing secure property rights for a broad cross-section of society, our framework leads to a number of important com-
parative statics, and thus to an answer to our basic question. First, political institutions that place checks on those who hold political power, for example, by creating a balance of power in society, are useful for the emergence of good economic institutions. This result is intuitive; without checks on political power, power holders are more likely to opt for a set of economic institutions that are beneficial for themselves and detrimen- tal for the rest of society, which will typically fail to protect property rights of a broad cross-section of people. Second, good economic institutions are more likely to arise when political power is in the hands of a relatively broad group with significant investment opportunities. The reason for this result is that, everything else equal, in this case power holders will themselves benefit from secure property rights.^2 Third, good economic insti- tutions are more likely to arise and persist when there are only limited rents that power holders can extract from the rest of society, since such rents would encourage them to opt for a set of economic institutions that make the expropriation of others possible. These comparative statics therefore place political institutions at the center of the story, as emphasized by our term “hierarchy of institutions” above. Political institutions are essential both because they determine the constraints on the use of (de facto and de jure) political power and also which groups hold de jure political power in society. We will see below how these comparative statics help us understand institutional differences across countries and over time in a number of important historical examples.
1.3 Outline
In the next section we discuss how economic institutions constitute the basis for a fundamental theory of growth, and we contrast this with other potential fundamental theories. In section 3 we consider some empirical evidence that suggests a key role for economic institutions in determining long-run growth. We also emphasize some of the key problems involved in establishing a causal relationship between economic institutions and growth. We then show in section 4 how the experience of European colonialism can be used as a ‘natural experiment’ which can address these problems. Having established the central causal role of economic institutions and their importance relative to other factors in cross-country differences in economic performance, the rest of the paper focuses on developing a theory of economic institutions. Section 5 discusses four types of explanation for why countries have different institutions, and argues that (^2) The reason why we inserted the caveat of “a relatively broad group” is that when a small group with significant investment opportunities holds power, they may sometimes opt for an oligarchic system where their own property rights are protected, but those of others are not (see Acemoglu, 2003b).
2.1.1 Economic Institutions
At its core, the hypothesis that differences in economic institutions are the fundamental cause of different patterns of economic growth is based on the notion that it is the way that humans themselves decide to organize their societies that determines whether or not they prosper. Some ways of organizing societies encourage people to innovate, to take risks, to save for the future, to find better ways of doing things, to learn and educate themselves, solve problems of collective action and provide public goods. Others do not. The idea that the prosperity of a society depends on its economic institutions goes back at least to Adam Smith, for example in his discussions of mercantilism and the role of markets, and was prominent in the work of many nineteenth century scholars such as John Stuart Mill (see the discussion in Jones, 1981): societies are economically successful when they have ‘good’ economic institutions and it is these institutions that are the cause of prosperity. We can think of these good economic institutions as consisting of an inter-related cluster of things. There must be enforcement of property rights for a broad cross-section of society so that all individuals have an incentive to invest, innovate and take part in economic activity. There must also be some degree of equality of opportunity in society, including such things as equality before the law, so that those with good investment opportunities can take advantage of them.^3 One could think of other types of economic institutions, for instance markets. Tra- ditional accounts of economic growth by historians, following the lead of Adam Smith, emphasized the spread of markets (Pirenne, 1937, Hicks, 1969) and more recent theories of comparative development are also based on differences in various economic institu- tions. Models of poverty traps in the tradition of Rosenstein-Rodan (1943), Murphy, Vishny and Shleifer (1989a,b) and Acemoglu (1995, 1997), are based on the idea that market imperfections can lead to the existence of multiple Pareto-ranked equilibria. As a consequence a country can get stuck in a Pareto inferior equilibrium, associated with poverty, but getting out of such a trap necessitates coordinated activities that the market cannot deliver. The literature initiated by Banerjee and Newman (1993) and Galor and Zeira (1993) is based on the idea that when capital markets are imperfect, the distribu- tion of wealth matters for who can invest and societies with skewed income distributions can be stuck in poverty. (^3) In Acemoglu, Johnson and Robinson (2001), we coined the term institutions of private property for a cluster of would economic institutions, including the rule of law and the enforcement of property rights, and the term extractive institutions to designate institutions under which the rule of law and property rights are absent for large majorities of the population.
These theories provide interesting models of how incentives depend on expectations of others’ behavior or the distribution of wealth given an underlying set of market im- perfections. They take the market structure largely as given, however. We believe that the structure of markets is endogenous, and partly determined by property rights. Once individuals have secure property rights and there is equality of opportunity, the incen- tives will exist to create and improve markets (even though achieving perfect markets would be typically impossible). Thus we expect differences in markets to be an out- come of differing systems of property rights and political institutions, not unalterable characteristics responsible for cross-country differences in economic performance. This motivates our focus on economic institutions related to the enforcement of the property rights of a broad cross-section of society.
2.1.2 Geography
While institutional theories emphasize the importance of man-made factors shaping incentives, an alternative is to focus on the role of “nature”, that is, on the physical and geographical environment. In the context of understanding cross-country differences in economic performance, this approach emphasizes differences in geography, climate and ecology that determine both the preferences and the opportunity set of individual economic agents in different societies. We refer to this broad approach as the “geography hypothesis”. There are at least three main versions of the geography hypothesis, each emphasizing a different mechanism for how geography affects prosperity. First, climate may be an important determinant of work effort, incentives, or even productivity. This idea dates back at least to the famous French philosopher, Mon- tesquieu ([1748], 1989), who wrote in his classic book The Spirit of the Laws: “The heat of the climate can be so excessive that the body there will be absolutely without strength. So, prostration will pass even to the spirit; no curiosity, no noble enterprise, no generous sentiment; inclinations will all be passive there; laziness there will be happiness,” and “People are ... more vigorous in cold climates. The inhabitants of warm countries are, like old men, timorous; the people in cold countries are, like young men, brave”. One of the founders of modern economics Marshall is another prominent figure who emphasized the importance of climate, arguing: “vigor depends partly on race qualities: but these, so far as they can be explained at all, seem to be chiefly due to climate” (1890, p. 195). Second, geography may determine the technology available to a society, especially in agriculture. This view is developed by an early Nobel Prize winner in economics,
The most famous link between culture and economic development is that proposed by Weber (1930) who argued that the origins of industrialization in western Europe could be traced to the Protestant reformation and particularly the rise of Calvinism. In his view, the set of beliefs about the world that was intrinsic to Protestantism were crucial to the development of capitalism. Protestantism emphasized the idea of predestination in the sense that some individuals were ‘chosen’ while others were not. “We know that a part of humanity is saved, the rest damned. To assume that human merit or guilt play a part in determining this destiny would be to think of God’s absolutely free decrees, which have been settled from eternity, as subject to change by human influence, an impossible contradiction” (Weber, 1930, p. 60). But who had been chosen and who not? Calvin did not explain this. Weber (1930, p. 66) notes “Quite naturally this attitude was impossible for his followers ... for the broad mass of ordinary men ... So wherever the doctrine of predestination was held, the question could not be suppressed whether there was any infallible criteria by which membership of the electi could be known.” Practical solutions to this problem were quickly developed, “... in order to attain that self-confidence intense worldly activity is recommended as the most suitable means. It and it alone disperses religious doubts and gives the certainly of grace” Weber (1930, pp. 66-67). Thus “however useless good works might be as a means of attaining salvation ... nevertheless, they are indispensable as a sign of election. They are the technical means, not of purchasing salvation, but of getting rid of the fear of damnation” (p. 69). Though economic activity was encouraged, enjoying the fruits of such activity was not. “Waste of time is ... the first and in principle the deadliest of sins. The span of human life is infinitely short and precious to make sure of one’s own election. Loss of time through sociability, idle talk, luxury, even more sleep than is necessary for health ... is worthy of absolute moral condemnation ... Unwillingness to work is symptomatic of the lack of grace” (pp. 104-105). Thus Protestantism led to a set of beliefs which emphasized hard work, thrift, saving, and where economic success was interpreted as consistent with (if not actually signalling) being chosen by God. Weber contrasted these characteristics of Protestantism with those of other religions, such as Catholicism, which he argued did not promote capitalism. For instance on his book on Indian religion he argued that the caste system blocked capitalist development (Weber, 1958, p. 112). More recently, scholars, such as Landes (1998), have also argued that the origins of Western economic dominance are due to a particular set of beliefs about the world and
how it could be transformed by human endeavor, which is again linked to religious differ- ences. Although Barro and McCleary (2003) provide evidence of a positive correlation between the prevalence of religious beliefs, notably about hell and heaven, and economic growth, this evidence does not show a causal effect of religion on economic growth, since religious beliefs are endogenous both to economic outcomes and to other fundamental causes of income differences (points made by Tawney, 1926, and Hill, 1961b, in the context of Weber’s thesis). Ideas about how culture may influence growth are not restricted to the role of reli- gion. Within the literature trying to explain comparative development there have been arguments that there is something special about particular cultural endowments, usually linked to particular nation states. For instance, Latin America may be poor because of its Iberian heritage, while North America is prosperous because of its Anglo-Saxon her- itage (V´eliz, 1994). In addition, a large literature in anthropology argues that societies may become ‘dysfunctional’ or ‘maladapted’ in the sense that they adopt a system of beliefs or ways or operating which do not promote the success or prosperity of the society (see Edgerton, 1992, for a survey of this literature). The most famous version of such an argument is due to Banfield (1958) who argued that the poverty of Southern Italy was due to the fact that people had adopted a culture of “amoral familiarism” where they only trusted individuals of their own families and refused to cooperate or trust anyone else. This argument was revived in the extensive empirical study of Putnam (1993) who characterized such societies as lacking “social capital”. Although Putnam and others, for example, Knack and Keefer (1997) and Durlauf and Fafchamps (2003), document positive correlations between measures of social capital and various economic outcomes, there is no evidence of a causal effect, since, as with religious beliefs discussed above, measures of social capital are potentially endogenous.
3 Institutions Matter
We now argue that there is convincing empirical support for the hypothesis that dif- ferences in economic institutions, rather than geography or culture, cause differences in incomes per-capita. Consider first Figure 1. This shows the cross-country bivariate relationship between the log of GDP per- capita in 1995 and a broad measure of property rights, “protection against expropriation risk”, averaged over the period 1985 to 1995. The data on economic institutions come from Political Risk Services, a private company which assesses the risk that investments will be expropriated in different countries. These data, first used by Knack and Keefer
