Central to the following discussion is the assertion that a foreign trade policy which maximizes the static efficiency gains from trade may result in reduced dynamic or X-efficiency and thus impair a developing country’s development potential. The dominant view of the relation between...

I reconsider the primacy of institutions over geography as an explanatory factor of cross-country differences in economic performance, which has recently been postulated by Acemoglu et al. (2001) and others. My estimates show that the reported missing direct performance effects of a measure of...