Prosperity and Political Institutions, A Statistical Analysis

At the heart of the study of economic growth is figuring out what makes some nations prosper and other nations poor. Economists and social scientists take many different perspectives on this issue. In this essay, my contribution to this debate will be looking at political institutions, and their relation to a nation’s prosperity. I will do this through running a statistical analysis.This particular study does not offer enough information to distinguish between correlation or causation. The point of it is to offer a purely descriptive analysis of the interplay between prosperity and political institutions, to see if countries with different political institutions have different incomes, life expectancies, or gini coefficients