The Effect of Institutional Quality on Economic Performance: An Application of Global Trade Analysis Project Models

Understanding the relationship between institutions and economic performance, as well as how institutional quality differs across countries, has attracted increasing attention in recent years. Northern countries support economic progress due to having strong institutions. On the other hand, weak institutions in southern countries prevent their progress. Therefore, it is very important for policymakers to identify the factors affecting institutional quality and to understand how institutional quality affects economic growth in order to develop efficient economic policies. The main motivation of the present study is to understand the effect of improving institutional quality on Iran's economic growth through total factor productivity using the Global Trade Analysis Project model. In this regard, the data were aggregated into two regions (Iran and the rest of the world) and ten sectors based on the research objective. To achieve the main objective of the study, two scenarios were evaluated: 1) Increasing the growth rate of production factor productivity in Iran (due to improving institutional quality); 2) Increasing the growth rate of production factor productivity in other regions of the world (due to improving institutional quality). The results show that improving institutional quality through increasing the growth rate of production factor productivity in Iran leads to higher economic growth in Iran and its sub-sectors.