One reason that average assessments of institutions might enter significantly in the growth
regressions is that these assessments improve as the economy gets richer, so the causality runs in
reverse. Note, in contrast, that growth regressions typically use initial values of education. To
further assess this possibility, Tables 5 and 6 present a series of growth regressions in which the
independent variable is the executive constraints at the beginning of the period. We focus on
executive constraints because it is the only measure that is clearly not a consequence of dictatorial
choices, and hence, even though it reflects electoral outcomes, can at least loosely be thought of as
relating to constraints on government.