Institutions, governance, business environment : to what extent do they affect growth? = Istituzioni, governance e business environment: come influiscono sullo sviluppo economico?

Lots of studies were produced in the past decade on the importance of the quality of the institutions for economic development. Several authors focused on the indicators provided by Doing Business to highlight the main factors favouring or rather limiting the economic development. But to what extent do governance, the institutions, both public and private, and the business environment actually affect economic performances? This paper is an attempt to answer this question through the analysis of panel data that contains this kind of information. The results of the analysis are statistically significant and confirm the importance of these variables as determinants of the income in the countries under study. In particular, a positive relation is observed between the income and a high degree of domestic and international confidence, ensured by qualitatively high levels of the governance, the institutions, as well as of the so-called business environment.