: Background Paper to UNDP, India, 1998, Country Strategy Paper for IDF-1998 and to the UN award winning HDR-2004 of West Bengal). …

This paper proposes a “before-and-after” approach to empirical examination of the relationship between democracy and … evidence indicates that an improvement in growth performance typically follows the transformation to democracy. Moreover …, growth under democracy appears to be more stable than under authoritarian regimes. Interestingly, wealthy countries often …

prediction that political liberalization could discourage trade and trade could foster democracy. …

democracy, a type of political system matters too: parliamentary and mixed presidential- parliamentary systems have a more of an …

This paper proposes a “before-and-after” approach to empirical examination of the relationship between democracy and … evidence indicates that an improvement in growth performance typically follows the transformation to democracy. Moreover …, growth under democracy appears to be more stable than under authoritarian regimes. Interestingly, wealthy countries often …

The paper uses the recently available data on growth rates, democracy, protectionism, and wars over the period 1820 to … the effect of democracy on growth, was colonialism economically bad for colonies, does protectionism affect growth … negatively, what is the effect of wars? We find that own democracy has a significant positive impact on growth which increases as …

The paper contrasts Lipset’s modernization hypothesis and Przeworski- Limongi hypothesis that entries into democracy … are random with respect to income. We use data on income and democracy going back to 1820, multiple definitions of … democracy, and non-parametric testing focusing on the distribution of entrants’ incomes. We find that income matters for entry …