transportation improvements converged to create city growth. We assess the impact of institutions on growth by allowing two ways for … institutions to affect growth. Institutions can directly affect growth, or it can impact on trade, which in turn affects growth …. Once we separately quantify the link from institutions to trade, and trade to growth, the independent effect of …

The focus of policy reform in developing countries has moved from getting prices right to getting institutions right …, and accordingly countries are increasingly being advised to move towards "best-practice" institutions. This paper argues … that appropriate institutions for developing countries are instead "second-best" institutions - those that take into …