Political Competition and Economic Performance: Theory and Evidence from the United States

Timothy Besley, Torsten Persson () and Daniel Sturm

Discussion Papers in Economics from University of Munich, Department of Economics

Abstract: We formulate a model to explain why the lack of political competition may stifle economic performance and use the United States as a testing ground for the model’s predictions, exploiting the 1965 Voting Rights Act which helped break the near monpoly on political power of the Democrats in southern states. We find statistically robust evidence that changes in political competition have quantitatively important effects on state income growth, state policies, and quality of Governors. By our bottom-line estimate, the increase in political competition triggered by the Voting Rights Act raised long-run per capita income in the average affected state by about 20 percent.

Keywords: US south; voting restrictions; political competition; economic growth (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: D72 H11 H70 N12 O11 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2006-01
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-pbe and nep-pol
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (15)

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Related works:
Working Paper: Political Competition and Economic Performance: Theory and Evidence from the United States (2005)
Working Paper: Political competition and economic performance: theory and evidence from the United States (2005)
Working Paper: Political Competition and Economic Performance: Theory and Evidence from the United States (2005)
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:lmu:muenec:769

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