"The authors use a sample of 147 countries to investigate the link between democracy and reforms. Democracy may be conducive to reforms, because politicians have the incentive to embrace growth-enhancing reforms to win elections. By contrast, authoritarian regimes do not have to worry as much...

Analysis of a panel data set for 1976-98 shows that on balance stock markets and banks positively influence economic growth; findings that do not result from biases induced by simultaneity, omitted variables, or unobserved country-specific effects

There has been no single magic formula for the success of the East Asian transition economies (Cambodia, China, Lao People's Democratic Republic, and Vietnam), whose performance in export and income growth has been strikingly better than that of transition economies in Eastern Europe and the...