There is a well-known debate about the roles of geography versus institutions in explaining the long-term development … Robinson (2001) was to address this last point by using settler mortality as an instrument for geography-induced endogenous … mechanisms from geography via institutions to economic development outcomes. In particular, we examine the determinants of …

economic development, notably institutions and geography. This paper sheds a different light on these determinants. We use … spatial econometrics to analyse the importance of the geography of institutions. We show that it is not only absolute … geography, in terms of for instance climate, but also relative geography, the spatial linkages between countries, that matters …