Autocratic Transitions and Growth

Tommaso Nannicini and Roberto Ricciuti

No 2967, CESifo Working Paper Series from CESifo

Abstract: In this paper we use a transparent statistical methodology – synthetic control methods – to implement data-driven comparative studies about the impact of autocratic transition on real per capita GDP. The applied methodology compares the growth of countries that experienced a transition to autocracy with the growth of a convex combination of similar countries that remained democratic, and it accommodates for the time-varying impact of unobservable heterogeneity. To implement this statistical framework, in a panel of 160 countries, we focus on 14 episodes of transition from democracy to autocracy. We find that the effects of autocratic transitions come in all shapes and sizes, since our data are split in almost equal parts between insignificant, negative, and positive effects. We also find that negative effects tend to get worse over time, and that African countries are badly affected by the autocratic transition possibly because of a resource curse.

Keywords: autocracy; democracy; growth; synthetic control methods (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: C21 C23 O43 O57 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2010
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (15)

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.cesifo.org/DocDL/cesifo1_wp2967.pdf (application/pdf)

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:ces:ceswps:_2967

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in CESifo Working Paper Series from CESifo Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Klaus Wohlrabe ().