TY  - JOUR
AU  - Henry,Peter Blair
AU  - Miller,Conrad
TI  - Institutions vs. Policies: A Tale of Two Islands
JF  - National Bureau of Economic Research Working Paper Series
VL  - No. 14604
PY  - 2008
Y2  - December 2008
UR  - http://www.nber.org/papers/w14604
L1  - http://www.nber.org/papers/w14604.pdf
N1  - Author contact info:
Peter Blair Henry
Stern School of Business
New York University
44 West 4th Street, 11-58
New York, NY 10012
Tel: 212/998-0909
E-Mail: pbhenry@stern.nyu.edu

Conrad Miller
E-Mail: ccmiller@nber.org
M2  - featured in NBER digest on 2009-05-01
AB  - Recent work emphasizes the primacy of differences in countries' colonially-bequeathed property rights and legal systems for explaining differences in their subsequent economic development.  Barbados and Jamaica provide a striking counter example to this long-run view of income determination.  Both countries inherited property rights and legal institutions from their English colonial masters yet experienced starkly different growth trajectories in the aftermath of independence.  From 1960 to 2002, Barbados' GDP per capita grew roughly three times as fast as Jamaica's.  Consequently, the income gap between Barbados and Jamaica is now almost five times larger than at the time of independence.  Since their property rights and legal systems are virtually identical, recent theories of development cannot explain the divergence between Barbados and Jamaica.  Differences in macroeconomic policy choices, not differences in institutions, account for the heterogeneous growth experiences of these two Caribbean nations.
ER  -