A Review of Institutions Rule: The Primacy of Institutions over Geography and Integration in Economic Development

Seminar paper from the year 2015 in the subject Business economics - Economic Policy, grade: 1,7, Technical University of Darmstadt (Fachgebiet Internationale Wirtschaft), language: English, abstract: Rodrik, Subramanian, and Trebbi (2002) contribute to the discussion on the impact of geography, institutions and international trade on cross-national differences in income levels. They find that only institutions exert a significant direct impact on incomes. Meanwhile, international trade has no direct effect and geography has at best weak direct effects on incomes. Examining its empirical framework, I find that the way the study measures geography is inadequate and that the framework therefore does not treat the three deeper determinants equally in the sense of giving the geography-hypothesis a smaller chance to prevail. Based on this finding, the underlying structure is adjusted and developed further to provide an improved basis for future analyses.