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

William R. Easterly and Steven Michael Pennings

No 9215, Policy Research Working Paper Series from The World Bank

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.

Keywords: Economic Growth; Industrial Economics; Economic Theory&Research; Armed Conflict; Educational Institutions&Facilities; Effective Schools and Teachers; International Trade and Trade Rules; Educational Sciences (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2020-04-16
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-ore
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Citations: View citations in EconPapers (9)

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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:wbk:wbrwps:9215

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