Mapping Informal Institutions – a Global Dataset

Stefan Voigt (Hamburg)
Nadia von Jacobi (Trento)

Abstract

The crucial importance of institutions for economic and social development has become part of the conventional wisdom in economics. Over the last couple of years, economists have become particularly interested in the potential role of informal – or internal – institutions but their measurement has been a serious challenge. This paper offers a dataset covering a wide variety of variables (more than two dozen altogether) on internal institutions, i.e. institutions whose non-compliance is sanctioned by members of society, in up to 100 countries. It draws on individual and collective measures as well as contemporaneous and historical sources of information. In reviewing the currently available data, it also relies on previous surveys such as Engel (2011) and Cochard et al. (2021) and updates them until 2022. The resulting dataset can be used in many ways, e.g. for ascertaining the compatibility between different types of institutions or documenting changes in internal institutions over time.

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