The Deep Determinants of Economic Development in China A Provincial Perspective

Abstract

There is a significant body of literature arguing that institutional quality is the key for long run economic growth and development. While the majority of these studies are based on cross-country growth regression, in our paper, we focus on the institution-economic growth nexus within a particular country, namely China. China is often regarded as an exception by having achieved miraculous growth for more than three decades despite relatively low institutional quality. However, our key findings suggest that at the provincial level, institutional quality played in fact an important role for the economic success of a province in China, “trumping” geographical factors and integration which only have an indirect effect by influencing institutional quality. We employ instrumental variable estimation techniques to address the endogeneity problems regarding the institutions-development relationship.