| Abstract: | In "Evaluating Recipes for Development Success" Avinash Dixitcriticizes recent efforts to identify the "fundamental" causesof development and to distill policy recommendations from theseefforts. This comment focuses on the strand of that literaturerelated to institutions and development. Two arguments are important:that the rule of law and the security of property rights areimportant for growth and that they are the product of politicalinstitutions. Professor Dixit argues that identification andother concerns undermine the second argument and inhibit theformulation of policy recommendations. While these concernsare valid, research has begun to disaggregate broad politicalinstitutions (democracy and autocracy) and to look at the detailsof political competition, such as voter information and politiciancredibility, which are both more robust determinants of politicaldecision-making and more susceptible to policy interventions. JEL codes: O43, O17, O20, P30, P48 |
