Suchergebnisse

AbstractThis paper examines a classification system for grouping the Arab countries together based on characteristics most relevant to sustainable development goals (SDGs). It analyzes SDGs in Arab countries with cluster analysis, identifies the most appropriate decomposition of the region for each of the SDGs separately and describes the characteristics of the unique SDG performance groups. The results show that countries move often from a better to a worse group or vice versa, implying that different and SDG-specific subregional groups should be used for work on each individual SDG. Examining the overlap of cluster memberships by countries through a network perspective further identifies the most tightly knit country groups. The implications of findings are relevant for informative monitoring of SDGs on the subregional level, as well as policy recommendation sharing for and between similar countries, and enhancing peer learning capacity.

AbstractIn this paper, we emphasize the role of institutions as the underlying basis for economic and social activity. We describe and compare different institutional classification systems, which is rarely done in the literature, and show how to empirically operationalize institutional concepts. More than 30 established institutional indicators can be clustered into three homogeneous groups of formal institutions: legal, political and economic, which capture to a large extent the complete formal institutional environment of a country. We compute the latent quality of legal, political and economic institutions for every country in the world and for every year. On this basis, we propose a legal, political and economic World Institutional Quality Ranking, through which we can follow whether a country is improving or worsening its relative institutional environment. The calculated latent institutional quality measures can be especially useful in further panel data applications and add to the usual practice of using simply one or another index of institutional quality to capture the institutional environment. We make the Institutional Quality Dataset, covering up to 197 countries and territories from 1990 to 2010, freely available online.