Measurement and Evolution of Institutions in Nigeria

Abstract

We construct three measures of political and economic institutions that cover a 150-year period (1862–2011) for Nigeria. To do so, we rely on a theoretical definition of the institutional measures, broken down into relevant components that assess the extent to which the Nigerian legal framework provides for specific rights and freedoms. We make use of preexisting (de jure) legislations, ordinances, and constitutions to assign scores to every relevant component. The newly constructed indicators (civil and political liberties, freehold property rights, and customary property rights) provide a platform for a comprehensive analysis of institutional change in Nigeria since 1862. We document the manner in which the evolution of these de jure institutional measures are shaped by Britain’s colonial objectives of gaining administrative control over the region to facilitate trade endeavors, the introduction of indirect rule, the amalgamation (unification) of the northern and southern parts of the country as well as postindependence military rule. We show that our measures of institutional quality are strongly correlated with existing and popular measures (for overlapping periods spanning at most 50 years). This finding bodes well for the reliability of our institutional indicators.

Land institutions’ credibility: Analyzing the role of complementary institutions

“…This demonstrates that various institutions are complementarity, which 'sheds light on how institutions reinforce one another' (Rithmire, 2017). Fadiran and Sarr (2016) studied the interdependence between political and economic institutions in Nigeria. Their study reveals that the two institutions are mutually interdependent.…”

Institutional drivers, historical determinism, and economic development in Mozambique

“…As for empirical methodology, we employ a two-step process along the lines of Fadiran and Sarr (2017). First, we use unit root and cointegration tests to assess “whether history matters” In practice, this implies determining the existence of persistence in the data and also long-term equilibrium relationships between the variables.…”

“…Most studies examining the modernization hypotheses and the critical juncture theory are based upon cross-sectional studies (Acemoglu et al , 2009; Inglehart and Welzel, 2010; Rodrik et al , 2002), but the development of our new, unique institutional indicators allow us to explore these dynamics and possible webs of association between institutions and economic progress through a longitudinal case study of Mozambique. We can thus explore the interplay of critical junctures and institutional drift as well as the contingent path of history (Acemoglu and Robinson, 2012) within a time-series context (Fadiran and Sarr, 2017).…”

“…Equivalently, outcome dependence entails current outcomes depending either on past outcomes or the time period, and equilibrium dependence requires that the long-run limiting distribution over current outcomes depends on past outcomes. The study also distinguished between path dependence (where the path of previous outcomes matters), phat dependence (where the events in the path matter but not their order), and state dependence (where the paths can be partitioned into a finite number of states containing all relevant information) (also see Fadiran and Sarr, 2017).…”