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I'd like to perform some statistical methods on data describing the quality/strength of institutions for countries in the world.

I've been searching for this data on the World Bank, OECD, United Nations and IMF.

I must have missed this index, as I've heard about people using it from a respectable source like those mentioned previously.

Does anyone know about such index from a reliable source?

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closed as off topic by Andy W, cardinal, whuber♦ Aug 14 '12 at 13:00

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By "quality of institutions", I assume you are referring to how well governments protect property rights, enforce the rule of law, the level of corruption, etc., as measured by various indicators. The International Country Risk Guide (ICRG) might be a good place to start looking. According to their website, "On a monthly basis since 1980, ICRG has produced political, economic, and financial risk ratings for countries important to international business." They maintain indices of corruption in govemment, rule of law, quality of bureaucracy, repudiation of contracts, and risk of expropriation, among others.

The World Bank has several publications on this topic as well. Two (older) examples are listed below. I'm sure you can find more up-to-date papers on their website.

  1. Kaufmann, Daniel, Aart Kray and Pablo Zoido-Lobaton (1999a). "Aggregating Governance Indicators". Policy Research Working Paper #2195, The World Bank.
  2. Kaufmann, Daniel, Aart Kray and Pablo Zoido-Lobaton (1999b). "Governance Matters". Policy Research Working Paper #2196, The World Bank.

Also have a look at the online economics bibliographic database maintained by the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis. Last, the Corruption Perceptions Index maintained by Transparency International is also an excellent data source.

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(+1) A nice answer with good resources; don't be disturbed if this question ultimately ends up closed as off-topic. :) – cardinal May 17 '12 at 13:03
@cardinal Thanks : ) – Alexander May 17 '12 at 13:09

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