Granger inspired testing the ISDs for possible causal relationships

Arjan de Haan and his co-authors are keen to use the ISS Indicators of Social Development (hereafter the ISDs) to show how institutional structuration processes can cause improvements in human well-being, including economic growth (de Haan et al, 2011). Developing this aspiration, though not uncritically, this paper explores how the ISS ISDs might be used to stimulate thinking about causal relationships by linking the ISDs to each other and conventional measures of country-level development status. But before undertaking the task of attributing causality, it is necessary to reflect on the nature of the data being used. The challenges in using the ISDs’ data can be summarised into six problems which need diagnostic reflection before interpretation of causal relationships can be convincingly undertaken .....