The Economic Effects of Direct Democracy - A Cross-Country Assessment

Stefan Voigt and Lorenz Blume
Additional contact information
Lorenz Blume: Economics Department, University of Kassel, Germany

No 2006-1-1144, German Working Papers in Law and Economics from Berkeley Electronic Press

Abstract: This is the first study that assesses the economic effects of direct democratic institutions on a cross country basis. Most of the results of the former intra-country studies could be confirmed. On the basis of some 30 countries, a higher degree of direct democracy leads to lower total government expenditure (albeit insignificantly) but also to higher central government revenue. Central government budget deficits are lower in countries using direct democratic institutions. As former intra-country studies, we also find that government effectiveness is higher under strong direct-democratic institutions and corruption lower. Both labor and total factor productivity are significantly higher in countries with direct democratic institutions. The low number of observations as well as the very general nature of the variable used to proxy for direct democracy clearly call for a more fine-grained analysis of the issues.

JEL-codes: H1 H3 H5 H8 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-cdm, nep-law and nep-pbe
Note: oai:bepress:
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (4)

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.bepress.com/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1144&context=gwp (application/pdf)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:bep:dewple:2006-1-1144

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in German Working Papers in Law and Economics from Berkeley Electronic Press
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Christopher F. Baum ().