Leader Value Added: Assessing the Growth Contribution of Individual National Leaders

William Easterly and Steven Pennings

No 27153, NBER Working Papers from National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc

Abstract: Previous literature suggests that leaders matter for growth in general. This paper asks which leaders matter and develops a methodology to estimate the growth contribution of individual leaders and calculate its precision. The findings show that few leaders have statistically significant contributions; it is difficult to know who is good for growth and who is not. The paper also finds that the most intuitive estimate of a leader’s contribution—the average growth rate during tenure—is largely useless for measuring his or her true contribution. Consequently, many leaders with statistically significant growth effects are surprises. Moreover, leaders in non-democratic countries are no more likely to be statistically significant than leaders in democratic ones.

JEL-codes: N10 O11 O43 O57 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2020-05
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-his
Note: DEV POL
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Citations: View citations in EconPapers (14)

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