Unbundling institutions

• 成果类型: Article
• 署名作者: Acemoglu, D; Johnson, S
• 署名单位: Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT)
• 刊物名称: JOURNAL OF POLITICAL ECONOMY
• ISSN/ISSBN: 0022-3808
• DOI: 10.1086/432166
• 发表日期: 2005
• 页码: 949-995
• 关键词: financial development; ECONOMIC-GROWTH; LAW; COASE

摘要

This paper evaluates the importance of property rights institutions, which protect citizens against expropriation by the government and powerful elites, and contracting institutions, which enable private contracts between citizens. We exploit exogenous variation in both types of institutions driven by colonial history and document strong first-stage relationships between property rights institutions and the determinants of European colonization strategy ( settler mortality and population density before colonization) and between contracting institutions and the identity of the colonizing power. Using this instrumental variables approach, we find that property rights institutions have a first-order effect on long-run economic growth, investment, and financial development. Contracting institutions appear to matter only for the form of financial intermediation. A possible explanation for this pattern is that individuals often find ways of altering the terms of their formal and informal contracts to avoid the adverse effects of weak contracting institutions but find it harder to mitigate the risk of expropriation in this way.