Is Social Capital Part of the Institutions Continuum and is it a Deep Determinant of Development?

Abstract

There is a growing literature that analyzes, using cross-country data, whether institutions or geography is the most important deep determinant of economic development. Key contributions to this literature include Hall and Jones (1999), Acemoglu et al . (2001; 2002), Rodrik et al . (2002), Sachs (2003), Easterly and Levine (2003) and Olsson and Hibbs (2005). This literature typically cites North’s (1990) definition of institutions as being ‘the rules of the game in a society or, more formally, [they] are the humanly devised constraints that shape human interaction’. However, the empirical proxies for institutions that are used in this literature focus on what North ( Ibid : 3) defined as formal institutions; informal institutions, which North argued were more important than formal institutions, are not considered. This study argues that proxies for informal institutions should be incorporated in this deep determinants literature. These keywords were added by machine and not by the authors. This process is experimental and the keywords may be updated as the learning algorithm improves.

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