Statistical institutes and economic prosperity

The quality of economic institutions can impact economic growth and it can mediate the relation between economic growth and its drivers. We examine the relevance of one such institution, which is the establishment of a national statistical institute for, amongst others, national accounts. We collect data for 106 countries, and we estimate that there are four separate clusters of countries with similar establishment dates. For these clusters we fit regression models to explain economic growth, and we obtain significant differences across these clusters with respect to relevant explanatory variables and effect sizes, suggesting that a national statistics institute indeed is an important institution for the macro-economy.