Abstract
Institutions have been widely studied as drivers of countries’ economic development. In the present work we investigate how the performance of ju- dicial systems affects property rights’ protection and contract enforcement. We focus on judicial timeliness as an objective proxy of courts’ performance on a panel of 175 countries. The hypothesis being tested suggests that slower courts hinder economic development. We employ several economet- ric specifications and techniques in order to estimate a plausibly unbiased effect of judicial delay on economic growth.