STATISTICS AND INTELLIGENCE IN DEVELOPING COUNTRIES: A NOTE

The purpose of this study is to assess the relationship between intelligence (or human capital) and the statistical capacity of developing countries. The line of inquiry is motivated essentially by the scarce literature on poor statistics in developing countries and an evolving stream of literature on the knowledge economy. A positive association is established between intelligence quotient (IQ) and statistical capacity. The relationship is robust to alternative specifications with varying conditioning information sets and control for outliers. Policy implications are discussed.