Institutions and their Measures: A Black Box of Goodies

Abstract

The use of institutional measures in empirical work is widespread, but the question of what these measures actually capture and how they are constructed is something that is not given enough attention. Institutions and their measures are therefore like a “black box of goodies”: Something that we do not know much about but at the same time is given a very prominent role in explaining economic development. This paper is an attempt to deepen our understanding of institutional measures by critically examining four measures that have been given a prominent role in the recent literature on economic development.