The devil is in the shadow. Do institutions affect income and productivity or only official income and official productivity?
研究了在考虑影子经济规模后，制度质量对总产出和全要素生产率的影响，发现制度对校正后的产出影响减弱，对校正后的全要素生产率影响不显著。
This paper assesses the relationship between institutions, output, and productivity when official output is corrected for the size of the shadow economy. Our results confirm the usual positive impact of institutional quality on official output and total factor productivity, and its negative impact on the size of the underground economy. However, once output is corrected for the shadow economy, the relationship between institutions and output becomes weaker. The impact of institutions on total (“corrected”) factor productivity becomes insignificant. Differences in corrected output must then be attributed to differences in factor endowments. These results survive several tests for robustness.