When elders rule: is gerontocracy harmful for growth?

Vincenzo Atella and Lorenzo Carbonari

MPRA Paper from University Library of Munich, Germany

Abstract: We study the relationship between gerontocracy and aggregate economic perfomance in a simple model where growth is driven by human capital accumulation and productive government spending. We show that gerontocratic élites display the tendency to underinvest in public education and productive government services and thereby may be harmful growth. In absence of intergenerational altruism, the damage caused by gerontocracy is mainly due to the lack in long-term delayed-return investment originated by the shorter life horizon of the ruling class with respect to the rest of the population. An empirical analysis is carried out on a rich data set that al lows to test theoretical results across different countries and different sectors. The econometric results confirm our main hypotheses.

Keywords: Gerontocracy; Economic Growth and Aggregate Productivity (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: J1 O4 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2012-01-12
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-age and nep-dem
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https://mpra.ub.uni-muenchen.de/79583/9/MPRA_paper_79583.pdf revised version (application/pdf)
https://mpra.ub.uni-muenchen.de/37063/1/MPRA_paper_37063.pdf revised version (application/pdf)
https://mpra.ub.uni-muenchen.de/43168/1/MPRA_paper_43168.pdf revised version (application/pdf)
https://mpra.ub.uni-muenchen.de/43168/2/AC_2012_FINAL_rev8.pdf revised version (application/pdf)

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