Showing 1 - 10 of 40
Does democracy promote economic development? We review recent attempts to address this question, which exploit the within-country variation associated with historical transitions in and out of democracy. The answer is positive, but depends -- in a subtle way -- on the details of democratic...
Persistent link: https://www.econbiz.de/10012466677
We estimate the effect of political regime transitions on growth with semi-parametric methods, combining difference in differences with matching, that have not been used in macroeconomic settings. Our semi-parametric estimates suggest that previous parametric estimates may have seriously...
Persistent link: https://www.econbiz.de/10012465503
This paper studies the relationship between political conflict and economic growth in a simple model of endogenous growth with distributive conflicts. We study both the case of two "classes" (workers and capitalists) and the case of a continuum distribution of agents, characterized by different...
Persistent link: https://www.econbiz.de/10012475348
Is inequality harmful for growth? We suggest that it is. To summarize our main argument: in a society where distributional conflict is more important, political decisions are more likely to produce economic policies that allow private individuals to appropriate less of the returns to growth...
Persistent link: https://www.econbiz.de/10012475421
Africa's recent growth performance has raised expectations of a bright economic future for the continent after decades of decline. Yet there is a genuine question about whether Africa's growth can be sustained, and if so, at what level. The balance of the evidence suggests caution on the...
Persistent link: https://www.econbiz.de/10012458476
Western Europe. An important factor, recognized in the literature, is that China centralized state institutions very early on …, while Europe remained politically fragmented for much longer. These initial differences, however, were amplified by the … different social organizations (clans in China, corporate structures in Europe) that spread in these two societies at the turn …
Persistent link: https://www.econbiz.de/10014357030
We study the political effects of the diffusion of mobile Internet between 2007 and 2017, using data on electoral outcomes and on mobile Internet signal across the 84,564 municipalities of 22 European countries. We find that access to mobile Internet increased voters’ support for right-wing...
Persistent link: https://www.econbiz.de/10014244346
The focus of policy reform in developing countries has moved from getting prices right to getting institutions right, and accordingly countries are increasingly being advised to move towards "best-practice" institutions. This paper argues that appropriate institutions for developing countries...
Persistent link: https://www.econbiz.de/10012464596
This paper asks why developing country policymakers have been so reluctant to undertake trade reform until the 1980s, and why many of them have embraced open trade policies so wholeheartedly since then. To answer these questions, the paper develops a heuristic index of the "political...
Persistent link: https://www.econbiz.de/10012475034
Does democracy promote economic development? This paper reviews recent attempts to address this question that exploited within-country variation. It shows that the answer is largely positive, but also depends on the details of democratic reforms. First, the sequence of economic vs political...
Persistent link: https://www.econbiz.de/10010261420