Does democratization spur growth?

Andreas Assiotis and Kevin Sylwester

The Economics of Transition, 2014, vol. 22, issue 2, 211-246

Abstract: type="main" xml:id="ecot12036-abs-0001">

Many studies have considered how democratization affects economic growth. We expand this work by allowing short- and long-run effects of democracy upon growth to differ since effects during political transitions need not coincide with those under established democracies. We also allow these short- and long-run effects to differ across world regions since history, demography and geography vary across regions. Using annual, cross-county data from 1960 to 2010, we find that democratizations increased growth rates in sub-Saharan Africa both in the short run and in the long run but lowered them in Europe. Effects in other regions appear less strong. Our results suggest that democracy could be most beneficial for growth in poorer, less stable regions. We also do not find any evidence of a transitional cost. Stronger evidence arises that these effects come from rising productivity rather than through greater investment. Finally, some support though mixed suggests that democracy's ability to mitigate the effects of ethnic heterogeneity provides a partial explanation for the cross-regional heterogeneity.

Date: 2014
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
http://hdl.handle.net/10.1111/ecot.2014.22.issue-2 (text/html)
Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.

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:bla:etrans:v:22:y:2014:i:2:p:211-246

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
http://www.blackwell ... bs.asp?ref=0967-0750

Access Statistics for this article

The Economics of Transition is currently edited by Philippe Aghion and Wendy Carlin

More articles in The Economics of Transition from The European Bank for Reconstruction and Development Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Wiley Content Delivery ().