Skip Navigation



Journal of Economic Geography Advance Access published online on December 3, 2008
Journal of Economic Geography, doi:10.1093/jeg/lbn047
This Article
Right arrow Full Text Freely available
Right arrow FREE Full Text (PDF) Freely available
Right arrow All Versions of this Article:
9/3/295    most recent
lbn047v1
Right arrow Alert me when this article is cited
Right arrow Alert me if a correction is posted
Services
Right arrow Email this article to a friend
Right arrow Similar articles in this journal
Right arrow Alert me to new issues of the journal
Right arrow Add to My Personal Archive
Right arrow Download to citation manager
Right arrowRequest Permissions
Google Scholar
Right arrow Articles by Bosker, M.
Right arrow Articles by Garretsen, H.
Right arrow Search for Related Content
Social Bookmarking
Add to CiteULike   Add to Connotea   Add to Del.icio.us  
What's this?

© The Author (2008). Published by Oxford University Press. All rights reserved. For Permissions, please email: journals.permissions@oxfordjournals.org

Economic development and the geography of institutions

Maarten Bosker* and Harry Garretsen*

*Department of International Economics & Business, Faculty of Economics and Business, University of Groningen, The Netherlands.

email <e.m.bosker{at}rug.nl>

JEL classifications: O1, F5, O57

To explain cross-country income differences, research has recently focused on the so-called deep determinants of economic development, notably institutions and geography. This article shows that it is not only absolute geography, in terms of for instance climate or being landlocked, but also relative geography, the spatial linkages between countries, that matters for a country's GDP per capita. More specifically, we analyze the importance of the geography of institutions. We show that apart from its own institutions, the institutional quality in neighboring countries is also important for a country's economic development. This finding is robust to various alternative specifications of relative geography, sample size and the inclusion of additional controls.

Keywords: relative geography, economic development, institutions
Date submitted: 14 December 2006     Date accepted: 16 October 2008


Add to CiteULike CiteULike   Add to Connotea Connotea   Add to Del.icio.us Del.icio.us    What's this?




Disclaimer: Please note that abstracts for content published before 1996 were created through digital scanning and may therefore not exactly replicate the text of the original print issues. All efforts have been made to ensure accuracy, but the Publisher will not be held responsible for any remaining inaccuracies. If you require any further clarification, please contact our Customer Services Department.