Curse of Democracy: Evidence from the 21st Century

Yusuke Narita () and Ayumi Sudo
Additional contact information
Ayumi Sudo: Yale University

No 2281R, Cowles Foundation Discussion Papers from Cowles Foundation for Research in Economics, Yale University

Abstract: Democracy is widely believed to contribute to economic growth and public health. However, we find that this conventional wisdom is no longer true and even reversed; democracy has persistent negative impacts on GDP growth since the beginning of this century. This finding emerges from five different instrumental variable strategies. Our analysis suggests that democracies cause slower growth through less investment, less trade, and slower value-added growth in manufacturing and services. For 2020, democracy is also found to cause more deaths from Covid-19.

Keywords: Democracy; Economic Growth; Public Health; Causality (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 50 pages
Date: 2021-04, Revised 2021-08
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-isf
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (2)

Downloads: (external link)
https://cowles.yale.edu/sites/default/files/files/pub/d22/d2281-r.pdf (application/pdf)
Our link check indicates that this URL is bad, the error code is: 404 Not Found

Related works:
Working Paper: Curse of Democracy: Evidence from the 21st Century (2021)
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:cwl:cwldpp:2281r

Ordering information: This working paper can be ordered from
Cowles Foundation, Yale University, Box 208281, New Haven, CT 06520-8281 USA
The price is None.

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in Cowles Foundation Discussion Papers from Cowles Foundation for Research in Economics, Yale University Yale University, Box 208281, New Haven, CT 06520-8281 USA. Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Brittany Ladd ().