Special-Interest Groups and Growth

Bonnie Wilson (), Dennis Coates () and Jac Heckelman ()

Working Papers from Department of Economics, John Cook School of Business, Saint Louis University

Abstract: This paper explores the relationship between special-interest groups and economic growth, using newly assembled data on the number of groups observed across countries. In a sample of 86 countries at two points in time (for a total of 169 observations), we ¯nd support for Mancur Olson's theory that interest group activity reduces economic growth. We also ¯nd evidence that interest groups are negatively associated with both channels to growth - capital stock growth and productivity growth.

Keywords: growth; institutional sclerosis; special-interest groups (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: O1 O4 D7 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-pol
Date: 2007-07

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Persistent link: http://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:slu:wpaper:2007-01

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