The Effect of Polarization on Economic Growth, Social Capital, and Democracy: A Cross-Country Study

Maham Zahra Mehdi and Danish Siddiqui

Issues in Economics and Business, 2020, vol. 6, issue 1, 42-66

Abstract: In the last decade, one of the biggest global issues that have been debated upon is whether increased rates of migration, diversity, and political polarization stemming from these factors have any impact on the economic growth of countries. Accordingly, this paper explores the effect of polarization on democracy, social capital, education, and economic growth in a cross-country analysis involving developed countries, developing countries, and the least developed countries. A bilateral time series analysis was conducted by treating each country-set in isolation, as well as a group and focusing on the period 2009 to 2018. According to our results, polarization appears to have a negative effect on the economic growth of developing countries. The same results were observed when we analyzed all the countries collectively. An inverse relationship was also established between polarization and social capital in developed countries. Meanwhile, polarization does not have any significant impact on democracy and education for any of the countries under study. It was also determined that when treated independently, democracy, social capital, education, and GDP per capita all appear to have a varying yet negative effect on polarization.

Date: 2020
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.macrothink.org/journal/index.php/ieb/article/view/17116 (application/pdf)
http://www.macrothink.org/journal/index.php/ieb/article/view/17116 (text/html)

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:mth:ieb888:v:6:y:2020:i:1:p:42-66

Access Statistics for this article

Issues in Economics and Business is currently edited by Derrick Harden

More articles in Issues in Economics and Business from Macrothink Institute
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Technical Support Office ( this e-mail address is bad, please contact ).