We explore the question of how political institutions and particularly democracy affect economic growth. Although empirical evidence of a positive effect of democracy on economic performance in the aggregate is weak, we provide evidence that democracy influences productivity growth in different...

One commonly held view about the difference between continental European countries and other OECD economies, especially the United States, is that the heavy regulation of Europe reduces its growth. Using newly assembled data on regulation in several sectors of many OECD countries, we provide...