This paper examines the effect of 'quality' of the institutional framework on economic development. Our empirical results support the hypothesis that 'good' institutions improve efficiency and accelerate growth. The positive effect of institutional 'quality' is more pronounced with mutually reinforcing support of economic freedom. Our results also indicate that 'good' institutions help developing countries grow faster to achieve conditional convergence. We infer from the results that economic development requires not only physical and human capital formation, but also freedom to choose and institutional support.

Applying multivariate cointegration analysis to US data, we find growth unidirectionally and significantly Granger causes inequality.

We improve results of the Mankiw, Romer and Weil (1992) augmented neoclassical growth model by considering broader measures of human capital. Compared with the MRW results, our approach increases the explanatory power of the model and the speed of conditional income convergence.

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