Growth-Friendly Dictatorships

Giacomo De Luca, Anastasia Litina () and Petros Sekeris

No 1209, Working Papers from University of Namur, Department of Economics

Abstract: In this paper we show that in highly unequal societies, different societal groups may support a rent-seeking dicator serving their interests better than the median voter in a democratic regime. Importantly, it is the stakes of dictator in the economy, in the form of capital ownership, that drives the support of individuals. In particular, in highly societies ruled by a capital-rich dictator endowed with the power to tax and appropriate at will, the elites support dictatorial policies that generate higher growth rates than the ones obtained under democracy. Such support arises despite the total absence of checks and balances on the dictator.

Keywords: Regime type; capital distribution; growth (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: D72 H41 O11 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 22 pages
Date: 2012-09, Revised 2012-09
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-cdm, nep-dev, nep-pbe and nep-pol
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.fundp.ac.be/eco/economie/recherche/wpseries/wp/1209.pdf First version, 2012 (application/pdf)

Related works:
Journal Article: Growth-friendly dictatorships (2015)
Working Paper: Growth-Friendly Dictatorships (2012)
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:nam:wpaper:1209

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in Working Papers from University of Namur, Department of Economics Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by François-Xavier Ledru ().