Growth empirics with institutional measures is performed for 25 transition countries overthe period 1990-95. Estimation results suggest that (particularly state) institutions aresignificant for growth and, especially, foreign direct investment (FDI), the latter in turnbeing important for the...

Institutions are strikingly absent from most economic theory, certainly from growth theory.In standard theory it is simply assumed that the needed institutional environment is there,within which economic agents can make their optimizing decisions. At the same time, indescriptive growth studies,...