Faster Courts, Faster Growth

Court efficiency directly predicts growth. Moving from the bottom to top quartile adds 0.84 percentage points to annual GDP growth — an effect that compounds to a 23% GDP difference over 25 years.

This is not a story about the rich getting richer through better courts. The causal mechanism runs through contract enforcement: when businesses can reliably resolve disputes, they invest more, extend more credit, and form more complex supply chains. The judiciary is economic infrastructure as surely as roads and ports.