Instead of surveying the effects of institutions on economic growth through statistical analysis, this study tries to review them from the standpoint of institutional theorists with the aim of giving some explanations on economic growth. The study reveals that formulating appropriate policies to expedite economic growth, which is indeed resulted from the impacts of various institutional elements on economic growth, requires more than merely pure quantitative surveys. This means that to do so, the researchers should take into account the factors such as market-creating institutional components, institutional change know-how, and socio-political institutions' impact on economic performance. On the other hand, apparently, from among the various solutions to forge economic growth, the one proposed by North and his colleagues, i.e. moving toward democratic order to reach economic growth is the best sustainable approach.

The weak economic performance of resource-rich countries results in the economic studies’ great concentration on the role of institutions in resource curse literature and employment of theoretical or empirical approaches to determine the cause of this phenomenon. In this paper, we argue that the two independent variables of political institutions and natural resources influence the economic institutions which are endogenous variables; by applying a descriptive-analytical approach and making distinction between function of “ economic institutions” and “ political institutions” . Political institutions form the political power structure to specify the elites’ scope of power in the establishment of favorable economic institutions, which aim at distributing the resources among the affiliated groups. We also use the empirical approach to show that natural resources do not have any significant effect on the quality of economic institutions by controlling the effect of political institutions. In contrast, the better quality of political institutions results in the better quality of economic institutions.