You discuss institutions, but I don’t think you discuss the right kind of institutions. If I am comparing Malawi to some of the other nearby landlocked African countries you mention, the first thing that jumps out to me is their dramatically worse economic freedom. Malawi has one of the worst scores in the entire world, ranked 147⁄165, a level more typical of central or saharan african countries.
(You didn’t mention Eswatini or Burundi, but they also score very badly—unfortunately the map tool above will only let me display 5 countries so I focused on those named in the text plus Zambia as it is neighbouring).
This doesn’t resolve the infinite-regress style question of what causes some countries to have more capitalist institutions than others, but when it comes to which institutions to investigate, I think it is their economic institutions we should focus on.
tbf it looks like the categories that drag Malawi’s economy down are the trade restrictions which were discussed and lack of “sound money”: inflation is often a symptom of being poor[1] rather than anything particularly unusual about its institutions.
Even more so if we compare institutions with Botswana and its relative wealth from being able to export diamonds rather than basic food.
productivity growth locally not keeping up with the cost of necessary imports, basically. Looks like Malawi de-pegged their economy from the dollar a while back because of balance of payment problems rather than because of some weird governmental quirk.
You discuss institutions, but I don’t think you discuss the right kind of institutions. If I am comparing Malawi to some of the other nearby landlocked African countries you mention, the first thing that jumps out to me is their dramatically worse economic freedom. Malawi has one of the worst scores in the entire world, ranked 147⁄165, a level more typical of central or saharan african countries.
https://www.efotw.org/?geozone=world&page=map&year=2023&countries=MWI,ZMB,RWA,BWA,LSO#country-info
(You didn’t mention Eswatini or Burundi, but they also score very badly—unfortunately the map tool above will only let me display 5 countries so I focused on those named in the text plus Zambia as it is neighbouring).
This doesn’t resolve the infinite-regress style question of what causes some countries to have more capitalist institutions than others, but when it comes to which institutions to investigate, I think it is their economic institutions we should focus on.
tbf it looks like the categories that drag Malawi’s economy down are the trade restrictions which were discussed and lack of “sound money”: inflation is often a symptom of being poor[1] rather than anything particularly unusual about its institutions.
Even more so if we compare institutions with Botswana and its relative wealth from being able to export diamonds rather than basic food.
productivity growth locally not keeping up with the cost of necessary imports, basically. Looks like Malawi de-pegged their economy from the dollar a while back because of balance of payment problems rather than because of some weird governmental quirk.