Political competition, policy and growth: theory and evidence from the United States

Timothy Besley, Torsten Persson and Daniel Sturm

LSE Research Online Documents on Economics from London School of Economics and Political Science, LSE Library

Abstract: This paper develops a simple model to analyze how a lack of political competition may lead to policies that hinder economic growth. We test the predictions of the model on panel data for the US states. In these data, we find robust evidence that lack of political competition in a state is associated with anti-growth policies: higher taxes, lower capital spending and a reduced likelihood of using right-to-work laws. We also document a strong link between low political competition and low income growth.

Keywords: political competition; competition; government; US; economic development (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: D72 H11 H70 N12 O11 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 28 pages
Date: 2010-10-01
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (4)

Downloads: (external link)
http://eprints.lse.ac.uk/121718/ Open access version. (application/pdf)

Related works:
Working Paper: Political Competition, Policy and Growth: Theory and Evidence from the United States (2010)
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:ehl:lserod:121718

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in LSE Research Online Documents on Economics from London School of Economics and Political Science, LSE Library LSE Library Portugal Street London, WC2A 2HD, U.K.. Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by LSERO Manager ().