The quality of government

We investigate empirically the determinants of the quality of governments in a large cross-section of countries. We assess government performance using measures of government intervention, public sector efficiency, public good provision, size of government, and political freedom. We find that countr...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Journal of law, economics, & organization economics, & organization, 1999-04, Vol.15 (1), p.222-279
Main Authors: La Porta, R, Lopez-de-Silanes, F, Shleifer, A, Vishny, R
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Bureaucracy
Civil law
Comparative politics
Economic activity
Economic life
Economic theory
Ethnolinguistics
Freedom
Governance
Government
Government bureaucracy
Government corruption
Government intervention
Government performance
Interventionism
Islam
Muslims
Political institutions
Political systems performance
Political theory
Politics
Property rights
Public goods
Public sector
Public services
Regulation
Religion
Socialism
State intervention
Tax rates
Taxation
Taxes
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Summary:We investigate empirically the determinants of the quality of governments in a large cross-section of countries. We assess government performance using measures of government intervention, public sector efficiency, public good provision, size of government, and political freedom. We find that countries that are poor, close to the equator, ethnolinguistically heterogeneous, use French or socialist laws, or have high proportions of Catholics of Muslims exhibit inferior government performance. We also find that the larger governments tend to be the better performing ones. The importance of (reasonably) exogenous historical factors in explaining the variation in government performance across countries sheds light on the economic, political, and cultural theories of institutions.
ISSN:8756-6222
1465-7341
1465-7341
DOI:10.1093/jleo/15.1.222