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This paper examines the relationship between the quality of different dimensions of institutional infrastructure and economic growth in a panel of 39 member countries of the Organization of Islamic Cooperation (OIC). The empirical results confirm that better-quality political and economic institutions can have positive effects on economic growth. All in all, the evidence from nonlinear model reveals that the quality of political institutions that ensure stable government, less expropriation, and low external conflict are the core dimensions of an institutional matrix because they influence the growth effects of economic institutions, confirming the "hierarchy of institutions hypothesis." The study also finds that when political and economic institutions are accounted for, institutions that prevent internal conflict and tensions arising from ethnic and religious conflicts do not have significant (positive) impacts on growth. Thus, institutional reforms to upgrade the quality of both political and economic institutions are crucial for development in OIC countries.

The empirical evidence predicts that political institutions are the core component of institutional matrix. They set stages for other institutions to be devised and influence the economic growth. Applying Kremer et al.'s (2013) dynamic panel threshold regression to a selected panel of 77 emerging market and developing countries over the period 1976-2010, we provide compelling evidence in favor of a split base on political institutions in the financegrowth nexus. The asymmetric impact of institutions on growth sets in around the optimum threshold level. Minimizing political risks through improvement in the quality of political institutions can improve the growth dividend due to financial development. Our empirical results appear to be robust across a wide range of alternative empirical strategies, several new disaggregate measures of political institutions, and also when addressing the endogeneity issues of the regressors.

Recent evidence shows that institutions figure prominently in explaining the 'Lucas paradox'. Using a threshold regression model, we extend this evidence to a situation where institutions index the relationship between foreign capital inflows and economic growth. We find strong and robust evidence that portfolio equity (including foreign direct investment) and debt inflows have positive effects on growth only in countries with high-quality institutions. Countries that fall below the threshold level of institutional quality record either insignificant or negative effects. This paper provides a possible explanation on the so-called Lucas paradox.

This paper investigates the relationship between inflation, inflation uncertainty, and economic growth in a panel of 94 emerging and developing countries. Based on the system generalized method of moments (SGMM) that controls for instrument proliferation, we discover the following results. First, when both the proliferation of instruments problem and the biased standard error in SGMM are accounted for, the results reveal that only in non-inflation crisis countries does inflation harm growth, while inflation uncertainty promotes growth. Empirical results, based on a three-regime model, confirm the negative growth effect of high inflation rates and the growth enhancing effect of low inflation. Second, the negative-level effect of not keeping inflation in check outweighs the positive effect from uncertainty in non-inflation crisis countries in all three regimes. Third, the existence of a positive effect of uncertainty about the inflation rate on growth through a precautionary motive is confirmed when inflation reaches moderate ranges (5.6-15.9%). These findings are robust, although only for noninflation crisis countries, to a battery of diagnostic tests, including the issue of weak and the proliferation of instruments and biased standard error.