Accomplishments of the Institutions, Organizations and Growth Program

• CIFAR researchers Daron Acemoglu and James Robinson have introduced statistical analysis into the study of the impact of institutions on economic growth. They have been able to show convincingly that the success and failure of various countries are strongly related to the types of institutions developed during the colonial period. Their quantitative work substantiates the belief that many countries’ economic conditions in the 20th century were significantly influenced by events that took place hundreds of years earlier.
• Slavery had devastating consequences for countries that were raided as a source of human labour, but how did countries fare that relied on slaves to fuel their economies? CIFAR researcher Nathan Nunn argues that the prevalence of slavery in the U.S. and New World countries had a strong negative effect on their future economic development. The specialization in plantation agriculture, the economic activity that could best take advantage of slave-intensive techniques, resulted in increasing economic and political inequality, which continues to affect economic performance today. Using new ethnographic data from every continent, Dr. Nunn has shown that a country that uses slavery would reduce that country's current income per capita by US$3,800.
• CIFAR program members have conducted a major systematic theoretical study of how democracy is created and consolidated. The framework of their analysis is based on three building blocks. The first stresses individual economic incentives as drivers of political attitudes. The second emphasizes the importance of conflict in generating opposing interests regarding the form of political institutions, which allocate power and resources. And the third looks at the central role that political institutions play in credibly committing to pro-citizen policies (as opposed to just promising concessions, which keep power in the hands of the elite).