Cultural and institutional determinants of economic growth: A cross-section analysis

Abrams, Burton A.; Lewis, Kenneth A.

doi:10.1007/bf01047747

Cited by 28 publications

(20 citation statements)

References 10 publications

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“…Also, since others have used cultural and heritage indicators to explain political freedoms (Bhalla, 1994;Abrams and Lewis, 1993), inclusion of these variables as regressors along with regime type would potentially confound tests of the latter's impact on property rights. In any event, to the extent that inequality, other social cleavages, culture, and colonial heritage remain constant over time, their effects are captured by country intercepts in our fixed effects tests.…”

Section: Control Variablesmentioning

confidence: 99%

Property and contract rights in autocracies and democracies

et al. 1996

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We present and test empirically a new theory of property and contract rights. Any incentive an autocrat has to respect such rights comes from his interest in future tax collections and national income and increases with his planning horizon. We find a compelling empirical relationship between property and contract rights and an autocrat's time in power. In lasting --but not in new --democracies, the same rule of law and individual rights that ensure continued free elections entail extensive property and contract rights. We show that the age of a democratic system is strongly correlated with property and contract rights. JEL O00, 010 3

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Section: Control Variablesmentioning

confidence: 99%

Property and contract rights in autocracies and democracies

et al. 1996

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“…This is not the case. With empirical validation, scholars know definitively that institutions matter for growth and development, even as they continue to struggle to specify the various mechanisms through which they do (Abrams and Lewis 1995;Knack and Keefer 1995;Acemoglu et al 2001;Barro 2002;Easterly 2002a). This empirical confirmation will likely reduce the risk of institutional marginalization that haunts institutionalism because of the difficulty in separating country-specific and universal behaviors.…”

Section: Institutions and Economic Theories: An Overviewmentioning

confidence: 98%

“…Formal institutions include the laws that govern human behavior. Since political institutions serve as their guardian, scholars rely on various proxies for political institutions as a way to quantify formal institutions, including electoral democracy, revolutions and coups, political rights and civil liberties, the rule of law, and bureaucratic quality (Abrams and Lewis 1995;Keefer and Knack 1995;Barro 2002). One obvious difficulty with these measures concerns how much they are consistent with the underlying causal relationship.…”

Section: An Empirical Assessment Of Institutions and Growth In Jamaicamentioning

confidence: 99%

Institutions and Caribbean Economic Performance: Insights from Jamaica

Elliott

Palmer

2008

St Comp Int Dev

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We explore the impact of social institutions on economic performance in Jamaica through a reinterpretation of the plantation economic model. In its original form, the plantation model fails to develop a causal link between the plantation legacy and persistent underdevelopment. Despite its marginalization, the model remains useful for discussions on growth and development. Consequently, we offer a reappraisal using the causal insights from Kenneth Sokoloff and Stanley Engerman. We use two examples to demonstrate how inequality encourages the formation of institutions that are inconsistent with growth, and an empirical analysis to confirm the hypothesized relationship between inequality, institutions, and economic development. Since inequality is expected to influence growth indirectly, we use a structural specification, which follows William Easterly's recent test of Sokoloff and Engerman's argument. Our reliance on a time-series specification is unique. We demonstrate that the expectation that, on average, inequality and growth is negatively related and that institutions may compromise growth are accurate for Jamaica, the most cited Caribbean nation in the current discourse. Our results carry several policy implications, including support for the recent calls in Jamaica for political restructuring. However, both the paucity of similar studies and the importance of the implications for sustainable growth and development demand further analyses.

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“…SOCIAL SCIENCES differ in the degree to which they attach importance to the consequences of culture. Anthropologists, sociologists and political scientists largely agree on a dominant influence of culture, as do most psychologists, but economists often still deny the relevance of culture as a direct determinant of economic behavior, despite the work of Wildavsky and others (e.g., Wildavsky 1994;Wildavsky et al 1990;Trentmann 1998;Inglehart 1998;Abrams and Lewis 1995;Grief 1994). Moreover, the economics mainstream and many economists have forgotten that in his works, Veblen looked upon human behav-In the Hofstede dimensions, the Western world differs most significantly on the scale labeled masculinity (M).…”

Section: Culture and Its Dimensionsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Political Culture, Economic Structure and Policy: The Laffont‐Tirole Model Extended to Modern Japan

Young

Meijaard

2002

American J Econ Sociol

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This paper deals with two issues. By linking culture and political systems, we develop alternatives to the "Developmental State" approach and propose, among other types, the "Bureaucratic State" for explaining the case of Japan. We extend the Laffont-Tirole (L-T) model of regulatory capture and propose a "bureaucratic capture" model. Variations of capture are shown to apply, given particular cultural predispositions. The case of atomic energy in Japan and the United States is then studied to assess the predictive efficacy of the extended L-T model. We conclude that cultural predispositions and the corresponding state types affect the degree to which capture takes place.

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Cultural and institutional determinants of economic growth: A cross-section analysis

Cited by 28 publications

References 10 publications

Property and contract rights in autocracies and democracies

Property and contract rights in autocracies and democracies

Institutions and Caribbean Economic Performance: Insights from Jamaica

Political Culture, Economic Structure and Policy: The Laffont‐Tirole Model Extended to Modern Japan

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